Hearts on Fire: On Queer Romance Novels with Alexandria Bellefleur, Jennifer Dugan, Kosoko Jackson, and Cat Sebastian

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT February 18, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

Looking for your next romance fix after Heated Rivalry? Join us in February for an evening with Alexandria Bellefleur, Jennifer Dugan, Kosoko Jackson, and Cat Sebastian, four celebrated voices in contemporary queer fiction whose latest novels explore love, reinvention, and the stories we tell to survive and begin again. Together, these authors present bold, heartfelt stories that blur genre and revel in desire, humor, and emotional risk. A book signing with all four authors will follow the event.

Featured Novels:

In Playing for Keeps, Alexandria Bellefleur delivers a high-energy, deeply sexy sapphic rom-com amid the glittering chaos of celebrity culture. When two rival publicists are forced to work together after their mega-famous clients begin a very public romance, professional tension quickly gives way to undeniable attraction. Bellefleur’s novel explores loyalty, ambition, and the risks we take when love refuses to stay off the record.

Jennifer Dugan’s Anderson in Bloom follows a reclusive former child star living a quiet life as a florist until her ex-girlfriend and former costar reappears with plans for a tell-all memoir. Witty, sexy, and emotionally charged, Dugan’s novel explores fame, betrayal, and the electric pull of love that never fully fades.

In A Dash of Salt and Pepper, Kosoko Jackson delivers a sharp romantic comedy set in a small Maine town, where recently dumped Xavier Reynolds finds himself working in a restaurant kitchen alongside Logan O’Hare, a brilliant (but frustrating) single dad. What begins as friction slowly turns into something warmer in this moving story about intimacy, ambition, and second chances.

In Star Shipped, Cat Sebastian brings her signature slow-burn tenderness to a contemporary enemies-to-lovers romance between two feuding costars on a long-running sci-fi show. A fake friendship and reluctant road trip force them to confront misconceptions and the possibility that connection has been waiting in plain sight all along.

We offer two in-person ticket options: the $10 Standard Ticket and the $40+ Supporter Ticket. Both provide the same access, but if you’re able, we kindly suggest registering for the Supporter Ticket to help sustain our programs.

Featuring

Alexandria Bellefleur

Alexandria Bellefleur

Alexandria Bellefleur is a bestselling and award-winning author of swoony contemporary romance often featuring loveable grumps and the sunshine characters who bring them to their knees. A Pacific Northwesterner at heart, Alexandria now lives in New York City with her cats, Mills and Boon. Her special skills include finding the best Pad Thai in every city she visits, remembering faces but not names, falling asleep in movie theaters, and keeping cool while reading smutty books in public. Her debut novel, Written in the Stars, was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner and a 2020 winner of The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction.
Jennifer Dugan

Jennifer Dugan

Jennifer Dugan is an awkward romantic who writes across many genres and categories. Her debut novel, Hot Dog Girl, was called a “great fizzy rom-com” by Entertainment Weekly and “one of the best reads of the year, hands down” by Paste Magazine. She is best known for Some Girls Do, her third young adult novel which took TikTok by storm. Her adult romances, Love at First Set and The Ride of Her Life, boast “the most hilarious disaster bisexuals you’ll ever meet” per Buzzfeed. Jennifer has also collaborated with artist Kit Seaton on several graphic novels, including the GLAAD Outstanding Original Graphic Novel Nominee, Coven.
Kosoko Jackson

Kosoko Jackson

Kosoko Jackson is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of the USA Today bestseller The Forest Demands Its Due. When not writing, he’s trying to watch one hundred movies a year, working on his MBA homework, or juggling teaching responsibilities. He lives in New Jersey with his golden retriever, Artemis.
Cat Sebastian

Cat Sebastian

Cat Sebastian is an award-winning author of queer romance. Cat’s books include We Could Be So Good and You Should Be So Lucky, and have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. We Could Be So Good won a Lambda Literary Award in 2024. In her spare time, she acquires too many houseplants and misplaces things.

Featured Books

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Playing for Keeps

By Alexandria Bellefleur

Published by HarperCollins

PURCHASE

Poppy Peterson’s life is finally back on track and she’s thriving as the publicist of the NFL’s most promising quarterback (and her childhood best friend), Cash Curran. So, she doesn’t appreciate when he makes an impulsive and public pass at America’s popstar darling, Lyric Adair. When Lyric’s notorious publicist Rosaline Sinclair reaches out, Poppy is ready to face her wrath, but instead learns that Lyric is equally interested.

As Cash and Lyric embark on their ill-advised whirlwind romance, Poppy and Rosaline are forced together, each determined to protect their own client from the other. Poppy is frustrated by Rosaline’s cool demeanor, while at the same time, as a legend in the industry, she’s determined to impress her. But, no matter what she does, she can’t shake the feeling that Rosaline doesn’t like her.

That is until one steamy night, when the two women contend with their unexpected feelings and begin a messy romance of their own. But with paparazzi, tabloids, and stalker fans nipping at their heels, Poppy and Rosaline’s loyalties will be tested in ways they could never expect.
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Anderson in Bloom

By Jennifer Dugan

Published by HarperCollins

PURCHASE

Former child star Anderson “Andy” Ducharme is hiding—has been for a long time, if she’s honest with herself, which she isn’t.

When she suddenly cut off all ties and left LA six years earlier to work in a flower shop in coastal New England, she wasn’t justrunning away from toxic relationships, embezzling agents, and all the rest of her Hollywood life; she was running to something… sort of, if you squinted, and if you accepted that what she was running toward was little more than a vacation daydream she had made up with her (in)famous ex, and former costar, Nicole “Nikki” Price.

Then Nikki announces her plan to write a tell-all book about growing up in Hollywood and their tumultuous time on the Nik and Andy show, and Andy’s feelings of hurt and betrayal come rushing back. Emboldened by anger (and maybe one too many drinks), Andy does something very stupid: she texts her ex for the first time in years. No one’s more shocked than Andy when Nikki actually shows up to her small florist shop, looking for answers.

Andy is fully prepared to send Nikki away, but it seems Nikki has some unfinished business as well. Now that she finally knows where Andy’s been hiding, she’s not letting her go so easy. And with each passing encounter, Andy can’t deny the simmering physical attraction that threatens to boil over every time they get close.

But can the two of them really reunite without wrecking Andy’s carefully rebuilt life? Or is she setting herself up for a fresh heartbreak?

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A Dash of Salt and Pepper

By Kosoko Jackson

Published by Penguin Random House

PURCHASE

Xavier Reynolds is doing less than stellar. He just got dumped, was passed over for a prestigious fellowship, and to top it all off he’s right back home in Harper’s Cove, Maine (population: 9,000). The last thing he wants to do is to work as a prep chef in the kitchen of the hip new restaurant in town, The Wharf. Especially since the hot, single-father chef who owns it can’t delegate to save his life.

Logan O’Hare doesn’t understand Xavier or why every word out of his mouth is dipped in sarcasm. Unfortunately, he has no choice but to hire him—he needs more help in the kitchen and his tween daughter, Anne, can only mince so many onions. It might be a recipe for disaster, but Logan doesn’t have many options besides Xavier.

Stuck between a stove and a hot place, Logan and Xavier discover an unexpected connection. But when the heat between them threatens to top the Scoville scale, they’ll have to decide if they can make their relationship work or if life has seasoned them too differently.
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Star Shipped

By Cat Sebastian

Published by HarperCollins

PURCHASE

Simon and Charlie, actors on a long-running sci-fi show, can’t stand one another. Charlie is impetuous, outgoing, and basically feral, and Simon thinks he should have stayed in reality television where he belongs. They’ve spent the better part of a decade quarreling over the spotlight and pretty much everything else, and everybody in the industry knows it. Now that Simon’s contract is finally done, he can move to New York, start fresh with work he actually likes, and get away from Charlie.

Simon’s only problem is that people might assume he’s been pushed off the show due to being impossible to work with. And he is kind of difficult to work with. He doesn’t get along with people—unlike Charlie, who somehow tricked everyone on the show into adoring him despite some outrageously bad on-set behavior during the show’s first season. Simon would rather never have to see Charlie again, but reluctantly agrees to stage a very public friendship during the short time before he moves. When Charlie has to leave town to deal with a family emergency, this means Simon comes along. Their road trip brings Simon to places he would never have willingly chosen to visit—and he finds he’s actually not having a terrible time.

The more he gets to know Charlie, the more Simon suspects he’s underestimated his former coworker. Simon also realizes that after seven years, Charlie might know him better than anyone ever has. Even stranger, Charlie seems to be starting to actually like him, despite knowing him so well. Still, Simon is about to move three thousand miles away, so whatever’s starting between him and Charlie can’t really amount to anything… right?

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