The US’s most prestigious awards for romance writing, the Ritas, have been cancelled after a host of judges and entrants pulled out over an ongoing racism row involving the industry’s largest trade group, the Romance Writers of America.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 300 books had been withdrawn from the contest by authors who were critical of the RWA’s recent decision to discipline romance author Courtney Milan over her public criticism of passages in Kathryn Lynn Davis’s Somewhere Lies the Moon. Milan, a longtime critic of racism in the romance industry, had called Davis’s novel a “racist mess” for its depictions of Chinese women; Davis and her fellow romance novelist Suzan Tisdale responded by filing formal ethics complaints with the RWA, alleging Milan was a “bully” who had hurt their careers.

The RWA ruled that Milan had “engaged in conduct injurious” to the organisation, suspended her for a year and barred her for life from holding a leadership position. Following a widespread backlash against the decision, including a string of resignations from RWA’s board of directors and public condemnation from major novelists including Nora Roberts, the RWA backtracked, announcing it had rescinded its vote to discipline Milan. It has subsequently hired a law firm “to conduct an independent audit of the recent matter involving its code of ethics”, but the moves have done little to calm the situation, with a petition signed by more than 1,000 members to recall the RWA’s president, author Damon Suede.

On Monday, the board of the RWA said it had voted to call off the Ritas because the numerous withdrawals meant the contest would not reflect the breadth and diversity of 2019 romance novels/novellas and thus “would not be able to fulfil its purpose of recognising excellence in the genre”. It blamed the withdrawals on recent events at the organisation that it said had caused “many in the romance community[to lose] faith in RWA’s ability to administer the 2020 Rita contest fairly”.

Milan wrote on Twitter that “cancelling the Ritas this year is the first right decision I’ve seen RWA make in this whole debacle”. But she added: “This is a step in the right direction, but without acknowledging what you did to lose faith, how it was wrong, and how you are going to make up for it, it’s just a step, and not the journey.” She and others continue to call for Suede to resign.