The Tamesis
Love Story is a series about love in all its forms. For this year’s installment, Fashion A series of essays and excerpts celebrating the art of romance fiction has been published in partnership with publisher 831 Stories. So break out the chilled wine and silk pajamas and read on.
viral success fierce competition Which means the rest of the world finally understands what readers of Tessa Bailey, K.D. Casey, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips have known for years: Sports and romance are exciting bedfellows. However, the exact cause is difficult to pinpoint.
Ironically, in the context of men’s hockey, the answer appears to be a culture of exclusion. (See: The Stupid Mess in the 2023 NHL Rainbow Tape Controversy.) Despite the league’s attempts to keep queer culture out of NHL fandom, queer fans have made spaces for themselves—whether it’s watching games at gay sports bars like Hi Tops or writing and reading gay fan fiction and romance novels set in the NHL. something like this fierce competition—A book by author Rachel Reid game changer series—is a great example of writers and readers using fiction to express queer joy in spaces that deny it. In the books and TV series inspired by it, Sean Holland, Ilya Rozanov and Scott Hunter must overcome internalized homophobia and secrets to embrace catharsis and joy.
In professional women’s sports, it’s a different story. The WNBA is filled with visibly queer representation. Engaged couple Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner were on the court for every Mercury game last season, while Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd didn’t come out forcefully on social media (very Gen Z). While Arike Ogunbowale and Brittney Sykes walked the tunnel in incredibly masculine outfits and looks, DiJonai Carrington epitomized classy femininity.
For new fans like me, it’s easy to forget that this kind of visibility is something queer players and fans have to strive for. In 2002, fans staged a kissing display at a New York Liberty game to make their presence felt. Sue Bird detailed how when she was drafted into the Army that same year, she was told the only way to succeed was to sell a “girl next door” image.
Even now, professional women’s sports leagues are not a perfect space, but players and fans have won enough battles and made enough progress that my lesbian WNBA romance novel, published last month, deep-rooted interestmore of a reflection than pure fantasy.
When I started paying attention to the WNBA at the beginning of the 2024 season, it wasn’t the talented Caitlin Clark that attracted me, but Clark’s Indiana Fever teammate NaLyssa Smith. Smith and DiJonai Carrington were former players, and the Fever played several games against Carrington’s team, the Connecticut Sun, early that season. The two players’ interactions on the pitch and on social media were intense, with fans quickly speculating that they were once again on each other’s radar – and indeed, weeks later, they were back together.
As a romance novel reader, I knew this was exactly the kind of sophisticated lesbian drama I wanted to see on the shelves of my local bookstore. Although I love lesbian sports novels did I’ve found that there aren’t many stories like this compared to the hundreds of M/M sports romance stories out there. I was daydreaming during the commercial breaks at WNBA games and eventually planted the seed of the idea that would grow into Rooted interest.
