Below is the complete list of categories for the 2026 Sultry Listeners Awards.
For additional information about romance genres and subgenres, please refer to these articles "Ultimate Guide to the Romance Genre" and/or "Romance and Its Subgenres Explained" for definitions, requirements, and examples.
Romance Genre Categories
Contemporary Romance
Romance set in the modern day, featuring current-day settings, relationships, and issues. This category includes popular niches such as small-town, sports, workplace, billionaire, military, cowboy, and celebrity romance.
Cozy Mystery Romance
A romance that combines a central love story with a lighthearted or low-violence mystery, often featuring amateur sleuths, charming communities, and a mystery to solve.
Dark Romance
Romance that explores darker, intense, or morally complex themes and relationships, which may include danger, obsession, violence, power dynamics, or other mature subject matter.
Erotic Romance (aka Smut)
Romance in which explicit sexual content is a significant part of the story and relationship, while the romantic connection remains an essential element of the book.
Fantasy Romance (aka Romantasy)
Romance set within a fantastical world or story involving magic, mythical elements, fantastical creatures, or other fantasy elements.
Historical Romance
Romance set in a historical period outside the contemporary era, incorporating the culture, society, events, and settings of its chosen time period.
Horror Romance
Romance that combines a central love story with horror elements, including fear, suspense, monsters, supernatural threats, or other frightening or disturbing themes.
Inspirational Romance
Romance in which faith, spirituality, personal values, or religious beliefs play a meaningful role in the characters' lives and relationships.
LGBTQ+ Romance
Romance centered on LGBTQ+ characters and relationships, including stories featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or nonbinary characters.
Novella / Short Story*
A romance shorter in length than a traditional novel, including novellas and short stories where the romantic relationship is central to the story. See the eligibility requirements below.
Paranormal Romance
Romance featuring supernatural elements or beings within a recognizable world, such as vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, demons, or other paranormal characters and phenomena.
Own / Authentic Voices & Inclusive Romance**
Romance that features authentic representation and lived experience, with both the author and at least one main character sharing the relevant identity or lived experience represented in the story. See the full eligibility requirements below.
Romantic Comedy
Romance that places humor, wit, and comedic situations at the heart of the story while maintaining a central romantic relationship.
Romantic Suspense
Romance combined with a significant suspense, thriller, mystery, crime, or high-stakes danger storyline, with both the romance and suspense playing important roles.
Sci-Fi Romance
Romance set within a science-fiction world or incorporating elements such as futuristic technology, space travel, aliens, advanced science, dystopian societies, or other science-fiction concepts.
Urban Fantasy Romance
Romance set in a contemporary or modern environment where fantasy or supernatural elements exist alongside the ordinary world.
Narrator Categories
These categories celebrate narrators at different stages of their audiobook careers. Eligibility is based on the number of narrated titles credited to the narrator at the time of nomination.
Favorite Voice to Discover (20 or fewer narrated titles)
Celebrate a narrator you're discovering and falling in love with for the first time.
Favorite Voice to Seek Out (21–50 narrated titles)
Celebrate a narrator whose work you actively look for and are excited to listen to.
Favorite Go-To Voice (51+ narrated titles)
Celebrate the narrator you know you can count on, their name on a book means you're ready to listen.
**Own / Authentic Voices & Inclusive Romance
Eligibility: The author (nominee) AND at least one main character in the story must identify as Black, Indigenous, a Person of Color (BIPOC), a member of another historically underrepresented racial, ethnic, or cultural group, and/or a person with a disability.
This category recognizes authentic representation and lived experience in romance. It includes creators and characters from diaspora communities, multicultural backgrounds, historically marginalized communities, and the disability community, including individuals with visible or invisible disabilities.
This category is inclusive and is not limited to the identities listed below.
Examples include:
- African American / Black / African / Caribbean descent
- East Asian — including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Taiwanese, and other East Asian identities
- Hispanic / Latine — including Hispanic, Latino/Latina/Latine, Latin American, and other related identities
- Indigenous Peoples — including Native American, Alaska Native, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and other Indigenous identities
- Middle Eastern / North African (MENA)
- Pacific Islander — including Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, and other Pacific Islander identities
- South Asian — including Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian, Maldivian, Nepali, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and other South Asian identities
- Southeast Asian — including Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Mien, Singaporean, Thai, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian identities
- People with disabilities — including physical, sensory, intellectual, developmental, neurological, and other visible or invisible disabilities
The identities listed above are examples and are not intended to be an exhaustive list. We recognize that cultures, identities, and lived experiences are diverse and cannot be fully captured in a single list.
Both the author's identity and the representation of that identity in the story are required for this category. A story featuring a BIPOC, underrepresented, or disabled main character does not qualify solely based on the character's identity; the author must also share the relevant identity or lived experience represented in the story.
*Novella / Short Story Eligibility
For the purposes of the Sultry Listeners Awards:
- Novel: 40,000 words (approximately 200 pages) or longer
- Novella: 17,500–39,999 words (approximately 35–200 pages)
- Short Story: 1,500–7,499 words (approximately 3–35 pages)
Word count is the primary measure of eligibility. Page counts are provided as approximate guidance because page length can vary significantly depending on formatting, font, trim size, and digital versus print editions.