Behind the Book: Q&A with Dr. Joanna Ruocco

By Erin Marlow, Communications Specialist in the Office of the Dean of the College

Associate Professor of English Dr. Joanna Ruocco recently published her book A Shore Thing with Penguin Random House. Set in the Victorian art world, this historical romance features Kit, a transmasculine painter dedicated to advocating for women’s rights. Throughout her writing and revision process, Dr. Ruocco collaborated with Dr. Mir Yarfitz, Associate Professor of History, whose research centers on trans history. A Shore Thing explores themes of masculinity, manhood, and gender identity and was named “A Best Romance of the Year” by The New York Times and Parade.

Dr. Ruocco recently spoke with the Dean’s Office about the origins of the book and her work as a writer and professor.

What inspired you to write this book?

A Shore Thing is the fourth book in a series of historical romance novels set in and around the Victorian art world. The hero, Kit, is a side character in the first book, The Duke Undone. In The Duke Undone, he’s a student at the Royal Academy of Arts Schools and a member of a Sisterhood of female artists. Kit is a rabble-rouser on behalf of women’s rights. He was assigned female at birth, but by the time A Shore Thing opens, he’s using male pronouns and living in Cornwall, where no one knows anything about his early life. He’s still committed to the feminist cause, only now — as a man —he has opportunities his Sisters don’t. He’s thinking a lot about manhood,
about masculinity. What is masculinity? What would it be without patriarchy? How can he imagine it? How can he embody it? These are the kinds of questions that Wake Forest history professor Mir Yarfitz explores in his work on trans history. I was inspired to write Kit’s story because Dr.
Yarfitz offered to read and respond to my drafts, to share his ideas and sources with me. Together, we embarked on a process of research-based imagining, and A Shore Thing was the happy result.

What was a major challenge that you faced in your writing process?

There are very few historical romance novels with trans main characters, so the stakes felt higher than they did, for example, when my hero was a duke. Very few dukes actually existed in 19th-century England, but they show up all over the place in historical romance novels. Dukes are wildly overrepresented. Queer and especially trans people are wildly underrepresented. Dr. Yarfitz and I discussed Kit’s characterization as both an opportunity and a challenge. Kit is particular. He’s young, handsome, able-bodied, propertied, white, and transmasculine. His story
isn’t the trans story. There isn’t a single trans story. Dr. Yarfitz and I wanted to make sure Kit didn’t seem too singular, even within the book. We dreamed up a whole supporting cast of queer characters with a range of gender identities. We also tried to make the idea of “gender identity”
something that wasn’t only applicable to queer or trans characters to show the complex ways all of the characters are embodying gender.

What would you say is your book’s unique contribution to the Romance genre? Larger society?

Romance is the genre that centers emotional experience, sends its protagonists on a journey toward loving interdependence, and always, always ends happily. I think we need as many love stories as possible, with all kinds of characters finding all kinds of love in ways that support who
they are and that contribute to building a world that’s safe for everyone. A Shore Thing is one more story to add to the growing canon of LGBTQ+ love, and I hope very much that it becomes less unique every day.

How do you involve students in your research and work? How do you bring your creative work into the classroom?

The second book in the series, A Runaway Duchess, came out of a summer class I co-taught with Wake English professor Sarah Hogan in London and Cornwall, a hybrid literature and creative writing course called “Literature of the Witch.” Our students wrote creatively in response to assigned readings and to our surroundings, and I wrote alongside them. Their excitement and
imaginative engagement fed my own. A Runaway Duchess is set partially in a version of Boscastle, where we spent a few days as a class. Some of our more memorable experiences went right into the book, which I dedicated to the students, of course! I’m in the Creative Writing Program, and all of the faculty are practicing writers, with exciting, wide-ranging projects. Our workshops are fun and dynamic (if I do say so myself), and that’s because we share our own craft with the students and encourage them to think of themselves as writers, too. We try to help them unleash their imaginations while giving them the tools they need to do what they want with their big ideas. That’s all connected to our own work in the world as writers.

What’s next?

My next book, A Rare Find, comes out this summer. It’s my first Regency romance, a queer, enemies-to-lovers treasure hunt through Derbyshire. A Rare Find owes a lot to Jane Austen, which means it owes a lot to Wake’s Jane Austen specialist, Jessica Richard. Dr. Richard and I co-teach a divisional course called “Happily Ever After: Jane Austen & Popular Romance.” The course makes me very happy, and our discussions of Pride & Prejudice and Emma helped me enormously as I tried to get a sense of the social attitudes of the time period for my novel.