How a community of romance novel readers became activists: ‘opened my world’

Many people in romancelandia' have rallied voters through podcasts and phone banks - and joined school boards

Jody Lee had long toyed with getting into politics. She spent years working at the US state department before moving to Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, with her family. The 57-year-old threw herself into volunteering; sometimes, people asked whether she wanted to run for the local school board. But Lee never felt ready to make the leap.

Until she started reading romance.