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

Charis welcomes editor Morty Diamond and contributors: Syd Yang, Liz Hardwick, Marina Montes de Oca, and Max Château for a panel discussion celebrating To the End: Queer Writers on Divorce and Liberation. This panel will be moderated by Samuel Ace.

To the End, edited by Morty Diamond, is a raw and fearless book of essays that delves into the messy realities, impossible heartbreaks, and profound liberations inherent to queerly uncoupling in the 21st century.

Across 24 essays, queer, trans, nonbinary, and intersex writers share their firsthand accounts of divorce, separation, and transformation, giving readers an intimate look at the stories that are often elided in straight, mainstream narratives—or in basically every divorce book out there.

This collection uplifts each writer’s lived truth, pushing back against respectability power plays that say: But we fought so hard for this. Don’t give people the wrong idea. Think about the damage that speaking out could do. Instead, Diamond and contributors foreground real stories of what happens when love ends, through specific queer lenses: When your partner won’t accept your transition. When covert narcissistic abuse destabilizes your world. When your Daddy bails in an email after 20 years. When you trade “legitimacy” for a part of yourself. 

The essays highlight, too, the unexpected joys, profound liberations, and necessary transformations we discover when we find our way back to ourselves. Each richly textured, deeply evocative reclamation—whether through spiritual growth, euphoric embodiment, deepened connections, the right kind of sex, or community aftercare—affirms that divorce can be devastating—but it can also be a catalyst for freedom.

Syd Yang is a mixed race/Taiwanese American trans/non-binary spiritual counselor, Buddhist chaplain and writer who engages decolonial possibilities for shared liberation through their practice, Blue Jaguar Healing Arts. Syd’s work and writing finds its resonance in the stories we each hold at the intersection of memory, body, sexuality and mental health. Some of their recent writing can be found in Lion’s Roar (Bodhi Leaves), Emergent Dharma, Q+A: Voices of Queer Asian America, and Bloody Hell! Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. 

Liz Hardwick is a coach, facilitator, and writer who lives and works beside the Wind River mountain range in Wyoming. When they are not on Zoom or in the mountains leading coaching expeditions, they are usually building obstacle courses for their kids and avoiding adult tasks that come along with the excruciating mess of midlife. They are a queer, nonbinary dreamer, in perpetual awe of other rural, queer, and trans rabble-rousers making the world more beautiful. Find out more at onewildlifecoaching.com or on instagram @one.wild.life.coaching.

Max Château (writing in the anthology as Jálynn T. Castleman) is a Brooklyn-based writer, creative, and professional organizer of thoughts, ideas, and projects of all kinds. She writes about queer life, mental health, motherhood, divorce, and the strange, difficult work of becoming yourself on purpose. Her work has appeared in Autostraddle, LGBTQ Nation, and she is a contributing author in To the End: Queer Writers on Divorce and Liberation (North Atlantic Books). She is currently working on her first book. Follow her on Instagram at @maxtchateau.

Marina Montes de Oca is a first-generation Chicanx raised in East Los Angeles who came out as queer to her all-girl Catholic high school in the nineties. She is an ex-Riotgrrrl, sometimes writer, fashion industry veteran, and small business owner. After having her son in 2014, Marina felt disillusioned by the negative impacts of mass consumer manufacturing, so she left her career as the director of marketing for a major premium denim brand to create a sustainably focused, kid-centered brick-and-mortar retail shop. She has a BA in English and business and currently resides in the suburbs, where she shadow dances in her living room to Peel Sessions on vinyl.


Morty Diamond, LCSW is a trans and queer therapist, artist, and writer based in California. A licensed clinical social worker with an MSW from San Francisco State University, he is Grants Coordinator and instructor in the School of Social Work and also maintains a private psychotherapy practice. Morty is the creator of To the End, a weekly salon that supports LGBTQ+ people navigating divorce and its aftermath.

Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer writer and sound artist. His latest books are I want to start by saying (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2024), Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish 2019), and Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* 2019). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, Fence, BathHouse, The Texas Review, Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, Best American Experimental Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.

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 captions, you may do so by turning subtitles on in Crowdcast once the event begins. You can also choose small, medium, or large subtitle text. Your subtitle settings only affect your own viewing experience, so you can change them without affecting anyone else watching the event. 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.