2025 Romance Includes You Mentorship

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Harlequin's Romance Includes You Mentorship is accepting story submissions from debut romance writers in underrepresented communities for a chance to start your romance writing career and have your debut novel published. Submissions will be accepted from May 1, 2025 at 0:01 am ET to May 31, 2025 at 11:59 pm ET.

The Romance Includes You Mentorship is all about finding new voices in romantic fiction that bring more diversity and representation to the genre. We’re looking to offer the writer of the top submission a publishing contract with an advance for their debut novel, as well as a one-year mentorship with a Harlequin editor to complete their story for publication, and a writing grant to support their early writing career. The mentorship has a total value of $5,000 USD.
 

Who Should Apply

For the mentorship, we are interested in submissions by authors in underrepresented communities, including, but not limited to, people who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color, biracial and multiracial, members of 2SLGBTQ+ communities, marginalized ethnic and religious cultures, and people living with disabilities and neurodiversity. Eligible writers include self-published and unpublished authors who are not represented by a literary agent. 

Submissions in English are accepted from residents of Canada (excluding Quebec), the United States and its territories.  Due to legal requirements, we are unable to accept submissions from writers living in other countries. 

 

What We're Looking For

We are looking for unpublished romance stories by debut authors that would be suitable for publication in one of Harlequin’s series romance lines, including Afterglow Books. We're interested in category romance novels. Category romances are typically 50,000 to 70,000 words and range from spicy to sweet, contemporary to historical, romantic suspense and more. They have a strong romance at the center of the plot, an equal focus on the romantic journey of both main characters, and a happy ending. Inclusive romance stories with all gender and identity pairings are welcome. To learn more about Harlequin’s romance lines, read the writing guidelines on Harlequin.Submittable.com. The submission must be your own original content and you must own its publishing rights to be eligible.

This mentorship opportunity does not include Harlequin’s trade publishing or Carina Press imprints. Submissions of young adult (YA) romance, general fiction genres and nonfiction are not eligible.
 

How to Submit

  • Please upload a cover letter, a full plot synopsis, including the ending, and the first 5,000 words of your romance story in a single Word document (.doc or .docx). It's not necessary to have the full story written when you apply, but we would like to understand the whole plot.  
  • In your cover letter—sometimes called a query letter—please include a one-paragraph story pitch or teaser, your brief bio, and any previous writing credits, along with a personal statement explaining why you applied for this mentorship, what you hope to get out of it if selected, and what greater diversity and representation in the romance genre means to you personally.
  • Upload your submission document to the “2025 Romance Includes You Mentorship” category on Harlequin.Submittable.com between May 1, 2025 0:01 am ET and May 31, 2025 11:59 pm ET.
  • We will accept only one submission by each eligible applicant, and your first submission only if you submit more than one.


Submission Reviews

  • All eligible entries will be reviewed by a committee that includes Harlequin editors and representatives with broad experience editing, publishing, and marketing multicultural, interracial and 2SLGBTQ+ romance fiction. Top submissions will be shortlisted and evaluated by a judging panel to select a winner. 
  • We will assess submissions based on the writing quality of your story sample and synopsis; the creativity of your story, characters and ideas and the strength of the romantic element; its suitability to be published in Harlequin’s romance publishing program; and an assessment of your interest and commitment to publishing a romance novel as demonstrated in your personal statement included in your cover letter.

Winner Announcement

  • Shortlisted candidates will be announced on July 18, 2025. 
  • The mentorship winner will be announced by September 30, 2025.

More Information

We use Submittable to accept and review our submissions.
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