NEW YORK, May 29 (Reuters) - Hang up the ripped bodices,

give Fabio the bad news and cue the lawyers: the Romance Writers

of America, a nonprofit devoted to helping romance writers build

their careers, is headed to bankruptcy court.

As with so many affairs of the heart, trouble started in a

hotel, or more precisely with hotel bills for the organization's

flagship annual conference, which the group said it could not

pay in its bankruptcy filing on Wednesday in Houston, Texas.

RWA membership has declined sharply due to recent

controversies over diversity within the organization and the

COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented it from holding in-person

events in 2020 and 2021, according to court documents.

Before 2019, RWA had 10,000 members, but membership has

dropped to about 2,000. The organization's declining membership

meant that its long-term conference commitments were

"threatening RWA's ability to continue to operate," according to

its court filings.

The organization estimated that it owes roughly $3 million

to the hotels that host its annual writers' conference and about

$74,500 in cash to other creditors. It plans to use its

bankruptcy to eliminate the debt to the hotels, and instead

institute a three-year payment plan that directs all of the

organization's disposable income to the hotels and other

creditors.

RWA said in a statement it expects a "swift resolution" to

its bankruptcy restructuring, which "will not impact its

day-to-day operations" of providing training and other resources

to its members.

The organization signed a long-term contract for its

flagship annual writers' conference in 2018, locking it in to

agreements with Marriott ( MAR ) hotels around the U.S. But as

membership declined, RWA tried to cancel or renegotiate its

now-excessive contracts, with only partial success.

The hotel that hosted RWA's most recent conference has

sought more than $700,000 from RWA because it sold fewer rooms

than RWA had reserved, and the group expects to lose money on

its upcoming 2024 conference in Austin, Texas, as well. RWA also

faces a $1 million contract termination demand from the

Philadelphia Marriott that is slated to host RWA's 2025

conference.

RWA has been roiled by controversies over diversity in

recent years, and it acknowledged that it had "lost the trust of

our membership and the romance community" in a 2019 statement.

RWA reconstituted its board, canceled its 2020 awards

program and pledged to improve its record on diversity after it

suffered backlash for ousting a board member who had criticized

other writers' work for containing negative racial stereotypes.

The organization also renamed its annual awards program to

emphasize its connection to RWA founder Vivian Stephens, a Black

editor who championed women of color in the romance writing

community.

Those changes failed to prevent further criticism in 2021,

when the organization gave an award to a historical romance

novel with a protagonist who took part in the 1890 massacre of

more than 300 Lakota men, women and children at the Battle of

Wounded Knee. RWA rescinded the award.