 This caused controversy in 2018 when Alyssa Cole's "An Extraordinary Union", a novel about interracial romance during the American Civil War, made no appearance in the RITA Awards finalists despite winning multiple other awards.Instead, all finalists were about white women, of which all but one fell in love with British aristocrats.In response, the RWA board noted that less than half of 1% of finalists were by black authors, of which none had ever won the award, and expressed a commitment to improve the diversity of the award.