Since late last year, “Heated Rivalry”—a series about two male hockey players who fall in love— has taken the country by storm. Now the novel turned HBO series represents the cultural moment we are in now: Romance books exploded in popularity after the pandemic and LGBTQ+ romance stories are becoming more prevalent.

To encapsulate the moment, we want to spotlight the queer love stories that came before it. Erin Bell, the director of the Writing Center at the University of Detroit Mercy who studies women’s writing and literature joined to help us pull back the layers of non-traditional love stories.