This event takes place on crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. 

Charis welcomes editor Rosiee Thor and contributors: Soumi Roy, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, and Claudie Arsenault for a panel discussion celebrating Being Aro: A Collection of Aromantic Fiction about Love, Connection, and Empowerment.

These twelve stories showcase aromantic people breaking generational curses, finding acceptance, and protecting the vulnerable while highlighting the infinite ways people find connection and love without romance.

A high school matchmaker learns a lesson about love. A rebellious spaceship pilot defies his culture’s compulsory coupling. A boy magically transforms banned romance novels into living dragons. A teen immune to romance, and the zombie virus, fights to survive the apocalypse. Being Aro is full of stories throughout real and imagined worlds that cross genres and disrupt the status quo.

Rosiee Thor is the Pacific Northwest Indie Bestselling author of Tarnished Are The Stars, Fire Becomes Her, and tie-in novels for franchises like Life is Strange and Firefly. Their debut cozy mystery, Dead & Breakfast, is out now from Berkley. They live in Oregon with a dog, two cats, and an abundance of plants.

Soumi Roy is a writer born and raised in a small city called Midnapore in West Bengal, India, but chased her dreams to Seoul, where she earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on early Alzheimer’s detection. She writes stories that often center themes of identity, autonomy, and love in its many forms. Her romance novella was featured in the anthology Love All Year (2021), and her short story appears in the disability horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken. When not lost in her own imaginary worlds, you can find her creating digital art of her favorite characters.

Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the USA Today bestselling, Compton Crook Award-winning, Ignyte Award-nominated author of The Splinter in the Sky, This World Is Not Yours, The King Must Die, and a dozen or so short stories. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Earth & Planetary Sciences at Stanford.

Claudie Arseneault is an aroace writer hailing from Quebec City with a passion for all things platonic love.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending our event, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.