Finding a Home for Your Fiction: Choosing Between Trad, Small Press, or Self-Publishing

Finishing up a novella or novel? Trying to figure out the best way to share it with the world? Weeknight Writers is here to help!

This free-first panel will feature authors who have published in a variety of ways discussing why they chose traditional, small press, or self-publishing and how you can make the best decision for your stories. Our featured authors are Gabriel Hargrave, RSA Garcia, May Barros, and Mia Tsai.

Finding a Home for Your Fiction is part of Storycrafting Sessions: Publishing, a one-day virtual conference hosted by the Weeknight Writers Group. Check out the full panel schedule for more information.

More about our panelists

R.S.A. Garcia is a Nebula and Sturgeon Award winning writer of speculative fiction. She is also the winner of the Machine Intelligence Foundation for Rights and Ethics' 2023 Media Award, and a Locus, Ignyte and Eugie Foster Award finalist.

Her Amazon Bestselling science fiction mystery, Lex Talionis, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and the Silver Medal for Best Scifi/Fantasy/Horror Ebook from the Independent Publishers Awards (2015). Learn more about her at rsagarcia.com.

Gabriel Hargrave is a trans man author and editor who lives in Minneapolis, MN. Besides being an absolute disaster queer, he enjoys crochet, playing D&D, reading, and educating people about trans issues, sex, and kink. The second book in his ongoing, genre-blending
Orchid and the Lion series, The Lion and the Dahlia, won both a Queer Indie Award and an Indie Ink Award for 2023. You can find his work at https://gabrielhargravewrites.carrd.co/ and contact him to book him as an editor at gabrielhargraveauthor@gmail.com.

Fantasy author, May Barros acts as editor-in-chief for Revista Avessa, a Brazilian literary magazine, since 2014; is part of the cast in the Andarilhos do Imaginário podcast, a writing podcast, since 2018. She also likes to create art and design games. May creates fantastic worlds where anything is possible with characters that make you care and stories where everyone gets to see themselves included. Born in 1992, May lives in Rio de Janeiro with her family. She has a PhD in Social Comunication by Uerj.

 Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. Her debut novel, a xianxia-inspired contemporary fantasy titled Bitter Medicine, was published by Tachyon Publications on March 14, 2023. Her sophomore novel, an adult science fantasy titled The Memory Hunters, will be published on July 29, 2025, by Erewhon Books.

Mia lives in Atlanta with her family, and, when not writing, is a hype woman for her orchids and a born-again Knicks fan. Her favorite things include music of all kinds and taking long trips with nothing but the open road and a saucy rhythm section.

Our moderator

Dianna Gunn writes fantasy, horror, and occasionally science fiction. She released her first novel, Moonshadow's Guardian, in 2018, and finished the Moonshadow Rising Duology with Moonshadow's Champion in 2024.

When she's not writing or editing, Gunn runs programs for authors through the Weeknight Writers Group, a social enterprise dedicated to providing affordable and accessible support for fiction writers.