Our first event of 2025, Writing Roundtables: Writing Trans Characters, is happening on March 15th, 2025!

Trans stories are more important than ever. This two-hour panel will feature four trans authors sharing how they approach writing trans characters and what trans folks should keep in mind when writing their own stories. We’ll also touch on how cis writers can create trans characters without perpetuating stereotypes or causing harm and how everyone can support stories featuring trans characters.

This event is hosted by the Weeknight Writers Group, a social enterprise dedicated to providing affordable and accessible support for authors. The first hour and a half will be devoted to questions from our Sustaining Members and the panel moderators. The final half hour will be devoted to live audience questions.

If you want to make sure your question is prioritized, you can sign up for a Sustaining Membership - it starts at just $1.50/month (and at higher tiers you can get free entry to this event and ALL of our Writing Roundtables!)

There will be live captions at the event thanks to our partnership with Renaissance Press, a Canadian publisher dedicated to uplifting diverse voices.

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Meet our panelists

Felix Graves is a queer and disabled AAPI author of dark speculative fiction. Most of his writing involves tragedy, queer romance, and faerie-inspired creatures. He prides himself on writing stories with a starkly honest ownvoice commentary on mental illness, disability, and queerness.

Georgina Kiersten is an author known for their wide range of LGBTQ+ romance novels that center around the stories of Black queer and trans people. As a Black-disabled trans person who was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to having dyslexia, being autistic, and having ADHD. They have a unique perspective on writing romance. It also drives their passion to create a diverse and inclusive romance genre for everyone.

Vaela Denarr (she/they/xe) is a mixed European/Turkish polyamorous nonbinary trans lesbian, SFF author, and creative director of Stardust Melody, an artistic collective committed to non-colonial, anti-orientalist dark fantasy. Her particular areas of interest and subject of her writing are lesbians, hope found in the darkness, complex relationships and the messy nuances of human nature. She can be found at https://vaeladenarr.carrd.co

Kara Jorgensen (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary oddball with a penchant for all things antiquated, morbid, or just plain strange. While in college, they realized they no longer wanted to be Victor Frankenstein but instead wanted to write like Mary Shelley and thus abandoned their future career in science for writing. Kara melds their passions through their books and graduated with an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing in 2016. When not writing, they can be found hanging out with their dogs watching period dramas or trying to convince their students to cite their sources

Meet our moderators

Dianna Gunn is a freelance SEO writer, digital marketing consultant, indie author, podcast producer, and about 18 other things. Her first fantasy horror novel, Moonshadow's Guardian, was published in 2018 and her short stories have since appeared in the Nothing Without Us, Too and Broken Olive Branches anthologies. She is currently editing the Killer Debt anthology and Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, both set for release in 2025.

Jade Benjamin is a Canadian writer and editor who is fiercely in love with language, words, and magical worlds. She works as a freelance editor, fitting work for independent author clients around her 9-5 expenses-paying job. She also works on the acquisitions team for Renaissance Press and is the co-founder of the Weeknight Writers Group.