San Diego is making room for a new convention this weekend: LoveLitCon.
The inaugural event takes place, appropriately, during Valentine’s Day weekend, kicking off Friday, Feb. 13, through Sunday, Feb. 15, at the Sheraton San Diego Resort on Harbor Island. It’s expected to draw more than 900 attendees and 37 businesses and vendors, including the San Diego Public Library and nearly 100 romance authors.
The event grew out of a passion shared by two bibliophiles and event coordinators, Cam Bowman and Emelia Cellura. After years attending book fairs and conferences nationwide, often finding themselves imagining how they would run things differently, in 2018, the pair established their own event space planning company: FLOCK. Their experience — and their shared love of romance novels — sparked the idea for a more intimate West Coast space where readers could gather, connect and celebrate the genre they adore. From that vision, LoveLitCon was born.
“We love romance novels, and we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we'd really want to do something more than what we've done in the past,’” said cofounder Cam Bowman. “So we just kind of pivoted, and that's how we came up with LoveLitCon. We put our passion for reading and gathering together with like-minded people and created this fun space for all of us to come and just celebrate the weekend.”
The three-day event will include author signings, book shopping, a quiet room for reading, panels on publishing and plenty of opportunities for readers to connect with each other and the stories they love.
“Our big goal and what our line is — what we keep saying in our team meetings — is ‘happily ever after for everyone,’” cofounder Emelia Cellura said. “No matter your walk of life or where you live, there's a happily ever after for everyone. Romance novels provide that.”
The cofounders felt there was a lack of large-scale romance events on the West Coast, and both women — self-described "West Coast girls" from Southern California — felt it was time to bring something closer to home. They decided to make San Diego the convention’s home.
“We do have Comic-Con here in San Diego,” Bowman said. “But it has a very tiny romance aspect to it — so not enough. And this is something that people are really craving right now.”
They hoped the convention fosters San Diego’s existing romance-reading community, bringing together like-minded readers and lovers to make long-lasting connections such as finding their next “book bestie.”
“That’s been our joke: ‘You don’t know it yet, but you’re going to find your next book bestie here,’” Bowman said.
“We want people to feel welcome at the convention, and that's been kind of our big goal in doing all this,” Cellura said. “This year has definitely been a tough one, but I think at the end of the tunnel is the light of romance — that everybody gets to gather together, and it's such a fun aspect and a happy environment.”
The event kicks off Friday, Feb. 13. Doors open at noon and tickets are currently on sale.
