I knew I was going to love Eric C. Wat when I read his website bio and he described writing “for queer folks whose main concern in life isn’t coming out”—which is a nice way of describing what I would call queer people who are not flattened to that one singular drama in the weird vacuum of (white) (middle class) (pop-fic) queer lit. That is, Wat writes for and about people with immigrant families, difficult or precarious jobs, illnesses and/or addictions, and all the stuff of real life.

We emailed with our friend Hannah Grieco about her session Writing Wrestling Live, coming to the Barrelhouse conference at American University in DC on April 18, 2026.

It was just about the easiest and fastest conference proposal in the history of our long-running Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing. A Dolly Parton Poetry Workshop? At the conference hosted by the literary magazine that literally has a love of pop culture written into our DNA? Yes, please, as soon as possible! We emailed with the person who sent us that proposal and will be leading “Take Me Back: A Dolly Parton Poetry Workshop” at our upcoming conference on April 18 in DC, about the workshop what makes Dolly a particularly rich text, and what other pop icons might lend themselves to poetic pursuits.