Conversations & Connections: Practical Advice on Writing

April 12, 2025, American University, Washington, DC

Conversations and Connections is a one-day conference organized by Barrelhouse in person at American University in Washington, DC on April 12, 2025.

  • What is Conversations and Connections?

    Conversations and Connections is a one-day writer's conference that brings together writers, editors, and publishers in a friendly, supportive environment. The conference is organized by Barrelhouse magazine, and has been held for the past 15 years in Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The April 12 conference is our 28th Conversations and Connections. All proceeds go to participating small presses and literary magazines, and to Barrelhouse.

  • What do you get with your $85 registration fee?

    For your registration fee, you get the full day conference, including the featured authors reading/QA, and 3 craft workshop/panel sessions, plus your choice of choice of 1 out of our 4 featured books. Through our “partner press program,” you’ll also be able to allocate $25 to one of our participating literary magazines or small presses, each of whom is offering a different incentive — a subscription, a book, a poster, something else— for your donation.

  • Who should attend?

    We strive to make Conversations and Connections truly practical and valuable for all writers. If you’re just getting started and trying to figure out how this all works and where your place might be in the literary community, we’re the conference for you. If you’ve published a fair amount of work and are l0oking to re-energize your writing practice, focus on specific elements of craft, and connect with editors, publishers, and other writers who are doing the same, we’re the conference for you. All are welcome and we really strive to focus on the second part of our title: practical advice on writing!

Register Now!


With your registration you’ll get: the full day conference, including three sessions of panel discussions and craft workshops, your choice of 1 of our 4 featured books, more literary stuff from our partner presses, 1 ticket to speed dating with editors, a 10 minute, and a 1-on-1 meeting with a literary magazine or small press editor.

Featured Books!

  • The Death and Life of August Sweeney, by Sam Ashworth

    NOVEL. SANTA FE WRITERS PROJECT.

    "One of the most sumptuous and inventive novels I've read in years. I flew through this book." --Tania James, author of Loot
     
    "In life and in death, the body offers a map of our experience. In August Sweeney, Samuel Ashworth takes us on a journey of how the hard living of a chef is both a joy and a punishment. I loved it." --Tom Colicchio

  • Ethan Hawke & Me, by Andrew Bertaina

    ESSAY. BARRELHOUSE BOOKS.

    In this book-length essay, Andrew Bertaina tracks his changing relationship with Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy over a more than 25-year span, as he falls in love, falls out of love, gets married, has kids, gets divorced and remarried. At each stage of his romantic life, Bertaina discovers new lenses through which to view Linklater’s films, which begin with a romantic meeting on a train--the kind Bertaina dreamed about in his own teenage years, when love and marriage were idealized things to dream about, and before all the messiness and complications of real life intervened. As Bertaina changes, so do the films, from that first teenaged viewing to his most recent, parked on the couch with his second wife and wondering if she’ll love the movies as much as he does. 

  • Leaving Biddle City, by Marianne Chan

    In playful and lyrical leaps, the poems turn like pages in a photo album. Marianne Chan’s speaker meditates on the meaning of what it means to be “Mid-Western” in conjunction with what it means to be “Filipina” and through examinations within the prose poem’s metaphorical boxiness and in dialogue with the speaker’s community, the poems soar into ecstatic remembrances. What persists in this remarkable collection are important questions about the choices we make for love and Chan’s beautiful writing will persist as thoroughly as the poured concrete of foundations inscribed with names of family.

    --Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets

    POETRY. SARABANDE BOOKS

  • Softie, by Megan Howell

    SHORT STORIES. UNIVERSITY OF WEST VIRGINIA PRESS

    "The stories in Softie offer a bold and mesmerizing exploration of visceral grief and desire, of violence and survival, and of the body’s capacity for both decay and shimmering afterglow. Expertly blending the strangeness and terror of magic with the strangeness and terror of being alive, this collection introduces Megan Howell as an unforgettable new voice."
    —Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

  • It All Felt Impossible, by Tom McAllister

    ESSAYS. ROSE METAL PRESS.

    “It All Felt Impossible is a life flashing by in the form of a book, incredibly fast and unbelievably rich, in all its universal specificity—the good dogs and bad haircuts, first crushes and brushes with death, the memories we dream up (the fiction we all write), all the fear, grief, stupidity, hope, and joy we get to live through, as “a person who is alive.” This book is so funny and honest, and so full of heart-breaking love.”

    — Elisa Gabbert, author of Any Person Is the Only Self

  • Sam Ashworth

    Samuel Ashworth is a creative writing professor at George Washington University and the author of The Death and Life of August Sweeney. He writes for The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Eater, Punch, and so on. He is a former columnist for The Rumpus, and is an assistant fiction editor for Barrelhouse. He lives in Washington, D.C with his wife and two sons.

  • Andrew Bertaina

    Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus 2024), the book length essay, Ethan Hawke & Me (Barrelhouse, 2025), and the short-story collection, One Person Away From You (Moon City Press Award Winner 2021). His work has appeared in The ThreePenny Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Witness Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Microfiction, and listed as notable in three editions of The Best American Essays and as a special mention in The Pushcart Prize anthology. He has an MFA from American University and more of his work is available at andrewbertaina.com

  • Marianne Chan

    Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. She is the author of All Heathens (Sarabande Books, 2020), which was the winner of the 2021 GLCA New Writers Award, and Leaving Biddle City (Sarabande Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Old Dominion University and teaches poetry in the Warren Wilson College MFA program for Writers.

  • Tyrese Coleman (Moderator, Featured Author Reading and QA)

    Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of How to Sit, a 2019 Pen Open Book Award finalist published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. She is also the writer of the forthcoming book, Spectacle, with One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Writer, wife, mother, attorney, and writing instructor, she occasionally teaches at American University. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and the Kenyon Review and noted in Best American Essays and the Pushcart Anthology. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Find her at tyresecoleman.com.

  • Megan Howell

    Megan Howell is a DC-based writer. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland in College Park, winning both the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Nashville Review and The Establishment among other publications. Softie: Stories, her debut short story collection, is available now wherever books are sold.

  • Tom McAllister

    Tom McAllister is the author of 4 books, including the forthcoming essay collection It All Felt Impossible. His novel How to Be Safe was named one of the best books of 2018 by Kirkus and The Washington Post. His other books are the novel The Young Widower’s Handbook and the memoir Bury Me in My Jersey. His short stories and essays have been published in The Sun, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Epoch, Cincinnati Review, and many other places. He is the nonfiction editor at Barrelhouse and co-hosts the Book Fight! podcast with Mike Ingram. He lives in New Jersey and teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers-Camden.

General Schedule

All times are U.S. eastern standard time:

9:00: Welcome

9:30 — 10:30: Session 1 panel discussions and craft workshops

10:45 — 11:45: Session 2 panel discussions and craft workshops

12:00 — 2:00: Speed dating with editors; online Write-In; Lunch

2:15 — 3:45: Featured author readings and QA

4:00 — 5:00 Session 3 panel discussions and craft workshops

5:00: Post conference reception

Craft Workshops and Panel Discussions

9:30 to 10:30

  • This workshop begins with the belief that the study of genre fiction strengthens ALL writing. Consider the plotting, clues, and structure of a mystery. The world building of fantasy and sci-fi. The historical specificity and symbolism of iconic objects in Westerns. And the character dynamics, tension, and sex scenes found in a Romance. By analyzing and practicing the unique masteries of genre fiction, writers of all styles and forms can advance their craft in much the same way elite athletes train in areas outside their focus to improve their performance, endurance, and strength. Cross-training is also a productive way to avoid creative burnout. While it feels like a break, you’re actually fine tuning specific craft skills. In this session, presenters will share strategies to engage in your own playful, genre cross-training, and kickstart your adventure with some generative exercises.

    Marguerite (Maggie) Sheffer’s debut short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees won the 2024 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was named a “Best Debut Book of 2024” by Debutiful and a “Most Exciting Debut Story Collection” by Electric Literature. Her stories appear in The Cincinnati Review, BOMB, LitHub, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Smokelong Quarterly, among other magazines. Her story “Tiger on My Roof” was a finalist for the 2024 Chautauqua Janus Prize, which awards emerging writers’ short fiction with “daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.” At Tulane University she teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change. She is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a New Orleans writing collective. 

    FICTION

  • Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz once said that a poet’s true vocation was to contemplate Being, but that often they are “cornered by history.” The tension between the historical and the ultimate can be tracked in some of the most spiritual poets of the last fifty years, including Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hanh, William Stafford, and Yusef Komunyakaa. It may be argued that it is only in the periods when the historical bears down on the contemplative quality of art that highly important texts are written. In this talk/workshop we will discuss the roles of urgency, patience, and repose in mapping the landscapes of so-called spiritual texts. Participants will write and some will share a response to a prompt. 

    David Keplinger directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Ice (Milkweed, 2023) and a recipient of The UNT Rilke Prize, The Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Colorado Book Award, The TS Eliot Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and other honors. A certifued teacher of Mindfulness, he founded The Mindfulness Initiative at AU in 2022 and runs Friday meditations on Zoom each semester using poetry as a way to explore contemplative practices.

    POETRY

  • We know, we know, we're all supposed to be part-time writers who aspire to quit our jobby jobs and live our best lives as Full Time Writers... but what if you LIKE your jobby job? Moderated by Jen Dary (a person who very much likes running her own non-writing-related-business), this panel will share a new perspective on modern life of a writer. Themes may include non-traditional career paths, working parents, entrepreneurship, the reality of health benefits and work/life balance. We will talk about how being a full-time writer is only one option - and how the world needs writers with a variety of depths, experiences and 40 hour work weeks. Specifically, audience members will leave with details on how the panelists fit writing into their busy lives and wide permission to enjoy all types of work!

    WRITING LIFE

    Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of How to Sit, a 2019 Pen Open Book Award finalist published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. She is also the writer of the forthcoming book, Spectacle, with One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Writer, wife, mother, attorney, and writing instructor, she occasionally teaches at American University. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and the Kenyon Review and noted in Best American Essays and the Pushcart Anthology. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Find her at tyresecoleman.com.

    Jen Dary is a writer and founder of Plucky, a leadership coaching firm. She writes about management, workplaces and health for publications like Harvard Business Review. You can find her at @jendarywriter or @bepluckster on Instagram.

    Andrew Holubeck is a tax attorney living in Baltimore, MD. His novel, The Empath and the Soldier, was released in 2023. He is currently working on the next book in The Unconventionals fantasy series. He can be found on Instagram at @theunconventionalsbooks.

    Vonetta Young is a writer and strategy consultant based in Washington, DC. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Indiana Review, Barrelhouse, Lunch Ticket, Catapult, and Gargoyle, among others. She serves as Executive Editor and Nonfiction Editor at The Offing. Follow her on Instagram at @VonettaWrites.

  • Writing about trauma can be both powerful and deeply challenging. This workshop is intended for prose writers who write about traumatic experiences and who want to treat trauma sensitively in their writing. Together, we will cover social science perspectives on trauma’s impacts, how to take care of yourself when writing about trauma, and our personal experiences writing about trauma.

    Bios:

    Dr. Jane Palmer, Associate Professor in Justice, Law and Criminology and a part-time MFA in creative writing student at American University. She is former social worker and previously worked with adult and child survivors of violence. She was also the executive director of a program for men who had perpetrated violence. As a professor, she writes extensively about vicarious trauma, community-based responses to harm, and help-seeking for survivors of interpersonal violence. Her poetry and creative non-fiction has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies.

    Rhonda Zimlich is an author and educator, teaching at American University. Her award-winning novel, Raising Panic, tells the story of two sisters navigating life in an alcoholic home while grappling with survival and family secrets. Her writing focuses on themes of grief, family dysfunction, and intergenerational trauma. She often combines poignant storytelling with explorations of societal and personal challenges. Her work is published in various literary journals and anthologies, such as Brevity, Chestnut Review, and American Story Review. She is the recipient of the 2020 Dogwood Literary Award in Nonfiction, the 2021 Fiction Award from Please See Me, and the 2024 Nonfiction award from Barely South Review. 


    WRITING LIFE

  • You’ve got a manuscript, and you’ve revised and revised again. You’re ready to send it out, and now you find out you have to craft a book proposal. In this multi-genre session, you will learn how to craft a compelling proposal from someone who has both had proposal accepted and works as a book series editor for a university press. Understand what makes you stand out (in a good way), and what to avoid. Bring your questions for a vibrant discussion on going from manuscript to book.

    Renée K. Nicholson is the author of Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness, co-editor of the award-winning anthology Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives of Illness, Disability, and Medicine, and the poetry collections Postscripts, and Roundabout Directions to Lincoln Center. She serves as the Series Editor for Connective Tissue on WVU Press, which publishes creative and scholarly works in narrative medicine. She is a contributing writer for Synapsis: a Journal of Health Humanities, and the author of many creative pieces and scholarly articles. Renée was a past Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Penn State-Altoona; and was the recipient of the 2018 Susan S. Landis Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the West Virginia Division of Arts, Culture, and History for her work writing with patients with ALS, cancer, and HIV in West Virginia.

     PUBLISHING

10:45 to 11:45

  • What happens to an imaginary friend once their childhood best friend outgrows them? Do you remember the fun and risks of dodgeball, freeze tag, or the drama of playing house? A child has the ability to imagine anything and act upon these whimsical illusions so what happens when a child is the witness of something only grown folks talk about? In this generative workshop, participants will study various examples of flash told from the point-of-view of the child narrator. Attendees will also receive prompts based on the examples provided and given time to write.

    Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her stories have been published in a variety of places including Fractured Lit., Taco Bell Quarterly, X-R-A-Y Litmag, SoFloPoJo, Necessary Fiction, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), and elsewhere. Her debut flash fiction collection, “These Worn Bodies,” was the winner of the 2023 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. She can be found online at  avitusbcarle.com or online everywhere @avitusbcarle.

    FICTION

  • A poem is only as strong as all its parts—the opening, the diction, the imagery, the syntax. Although that may be true, we often put pressure on its closing moments. Should the poem close with a mic drop? A graceful bow? As a writer, how do you determine where the poem should snap shut? 

    In this craft conversation, we’ll discuss methods and techniques for how to end a poem. Participants are encouraged to bring a piece for which they’d like to rethink its ending.

    Chet'la Sebree is the author of Field Study (FSG Originals, June 2021), winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong as the winner of the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry (2020). Her third poetry collection, Blue Opening, is forthcoming from Tin House in Fall 2025 and her debut essay collection, turn (w)here: essays on belonging, is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2026.

    POETRY

  • Speculation: the contemplation or consideration of a subject. To think about something in a new way, not necessarily based on observable facts.

    Nonfiction: narrative prose based on facts and reality.

    Memory, as we all know, is subjective. And it’s worn into us, events repeating in our minds until we’re absolutely sure of our truth. But what happens if we stretch beyond that understanding? If we explore the “what if,” symbolic storytelling, or even ghost stories?

    What might we write if we’re brave enough to reexamine our personal history?

    In this fast-paced introduction to speculative nonfiction, we’ll use exercises to brainstorm and begin two new flash nonfiction drafts. Come ready to put bold, honest words on the page…and leave with a new understanding of your own writing process!

    Hannah Grieco is a writer in Washington, DC. Her chapbook "First Kicking, Then Not" is forthcoming this fall from Stanchion. Her work can be read in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, Brevity, Shenandoah, Poet Lore, Fairy Tale Review, Passages North, and more. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @‌writesloud.

    NONFICTION.

  • For many of us, literature is a powerful way to engage with the world, to grapple with the larger social, political, and human issues at work in our lives. But what happens when our world is in turmoil and some of our most important values are called into question? What is our responsibility as writers to support our community and take on political concerns in and out of our writing? What communal and social roles can and should writers play in times of turmoil? And how do we keep from feeling silenced or overwhelmed by events? This panel of writers and organizers will discuss how we can engage social and political concerns in our writing, as well as the role of the literary arts in the larger community.

    Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her work with young poets. Her poetry, prose, and translations have appeared widely in print and online. She is the author of three books of poetry, Dear Empire (Gunpowder Press), winner of the 2025 William Meredith Prize and the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize; Towline (Cloudbank Books), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Words We Might One Day Say, winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize for Poetry. She teaches at Marymount University.

    WRITING LIFE

  • When working on a project that contains a large cast of characters, whether in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, writers benefit from practices and mechanisms that help them both generate and organize said characters in a way that supports and catalyzes, rather than constrains, the creative process. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore several mechanisms for creating and developing memorable characters, from D&D character sheets to case studies from contemporary novels and poetry collections. Then we’ll use provided shells to kickstart the process of character-building and identify productive tensions. We’ll conclude with time for experiential sharing, Q&A, and trouble-shooting. Participants may have a project in mind/project in progress to work on during the workshop, but that is not required. Participants will receive paper and digital copies of the provided generative and organizational shells that they can modify for their own use.

    Holly M. Wendt is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lebanon Valley College and the author of Heading North (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). Wendt is a recipient of fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Jentel Foundation, and Hambidge Center. Their work has appeared in Passages North, Shenandoah, Four Way Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. Their sports-based nonfiction has also appeared in Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing, The Rumpus, and Sport Literate.

4:00 to 5:00

  • Learn to tell a moving, powerful story in less than 1,000 words, with tips on how to create and sustain narrative tension, how to make meaning with the reader, and how craft elements of flash storytelling can also be applied to longer creative projects such as memoir and novels. Hosted by founding editor of In A Flash Kate Lewis, whose flash fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Literary Mama, Short Reads, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things,The New York Times, and Barely South Review, this session will also discuss the growing market for flash and why short short pieces can make a big impact. 

    Kate Lewis is an essayist and poet whose work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Men’s Health, Romper, The Good Trade, Literary Mama, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING,  an essay collection on the unexpected rites of passage that transform people into parents.

    Kate's work has been nominated for Best of the Net and supported by time at the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Perry Morgan Fellowship from Old Dominion University. She is an essays reader at The Rumpus, and a founding editor of In A Flash. At Substack, she writes The Village, conversations on craft and community.

    FICTION

  • The earliest known blackout poetry examples hail from Benjamin Franklin’s days. Franklin’s neighbor, Caleb Whiteford, would publish redacted versions of the paper, using puns flowing across the text to create new meaning in the pages. Let’s have some fun and mimic Whiteford by creating new poems from a variety of texts (provided by Courtney). We’ll review examples which use different source texts – novels, emails, even the poet’s own original poems – to write blackout poems. Bring your creativity to this generative workshop!

    Courtney LeBlanc (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections, Her Dark Everything; Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize); Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington Poet Laureate, the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press, and Poetry Coven, a monthly generative poetry workshop. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com. 

    POETRY

  • This is a workshop about the craft of revision, primarily. We will consider structure in effective essays as a controlled pattern of attack (action or momentum) and release (reflection or diversion). How can a writer improve upon an essay draft through choices in compression (cutting or combining) or decompression (expanding or pattern-breaking)? When should the attack or release be faster or slower, quieter or louder? What’s the right ratio and sequence for your piece? It all depends on how you want your reader’s consciousness to experience the consciousness of your narrator-self. We will go over this particular method of revision, ask these questions, and study a few brief essays with distinct choices in patterning as examples of possible resulting effects.

    Michael Wheaton is the author of the essay Home Movies (BUNNY, 2024). His writing has appeared previously in Essay Daily, DIAGRAM, Burrow Press Review, HAD, Rejection Letters, and other online journals. He publishes Autofocus Books.

    NONFICTION.

  • What do editors love? What do they hate? What really goes on behind the scenes? Should you be worried about your cover letter (spoiler: not really)? Our editors will answer all of these questions and more.

    Editors:

    Jeff Bogle is a dad of two daughters, an avid traveler, an award-winning photographer, an author, and a freelance writer who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife and their cats. He's written for the Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Cosmo, Travel + Leisure, USA Today, Fodor's, Wine Enthusiast, Food and Wine, and Real Simple, among other print and online publications. Jeff is the founder, publisher, editor-in-chief, and one-man band behind the quarterly black-and-white literary magazine and colorful book press, Stanchion. His own book, Streets Cats and Where to Find Them, will be published by Running Press on August 19, 2025.

    Lacey N. Dunham's debut novel The Belles is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster / Atria in September 2025. She has received writing fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and Catapult, and she was a semi-finalist for the Speculative Literature Foundation's Working-Class Writers Grant. Her work appears in Ploughshares, Witness, The Normal School, Southwest Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others, and she currently serves as an editor for both Necessary Fiction and Story. Visit her online at www.laceyndunham.com. 

    Austin Ross is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. He is the author of the novel Gloria Patri and is a senior editor with HarperCollins, where he acquires and develops a wide variety of nonfiction titles. His fiction and essays have been featured in Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. He co-wrote the adaptation of his story "The Man for the Job," the short film version of which is in post-production. He is an alumnus of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and children.

    Vonetta Young is a writer and strategy consultant based in Washington, DC. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Indiana Review, Barrelhouse, Lunch Ticket, Catapult, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Gargoyle, among others. She is an alumna of writing workshops at VONA/Voices, the VQR Writers Conference, Yale Writer’s Workshop, the Community of Writers, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her work has also been supported by the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity and The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow. She received a BA in English and an MBA in finance from Georgetown University. Follow her on Instagram at @VonettaWrites.

    PUBLISHING. WRITING LIFE.

  • How do we support our creative writing? This workshop demystifies the toolkit writers need for opportunities like publication, residencies, workshops, and grants. We’ll craft a bio and artist statement and discuss our online and professional presence (social media, CV, and website). We'll discuss available opportunities and where to search. Participants will leave with the tools. knowledge, and inspiration to submit and apply. There will be time for questions as well!

    Maria S. Picone/수영 (mariaspicone.com; @mspicone) is a queer Korean American adoptee who has three chapbooks: Anti Asian Bias, Adoptee Song (forthcoming Game Over Books), This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium). She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Reckoning, and others including Best Small Fictions 2021. She won Salamander’s Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Prize, Cream City Review’s 2020 Poetry Prize, and support from Kenyon Review, Juniper, Tin House, Hambidge, The Watering Hole, South Carolina Arts Commission, South Arts, and elsewhere. She edits at Chestnut Review, Uncharted, Five Minutes, and Foglifter.

What Our Attendees Say

  • “The conference was extremely well organized and welcoming. I really appreciated the diversity of both the attendees and the speakers, especially as someone who's unpublished and has only been writing again for a couple of years.”

    Philadephia Conference Attendee 2023

  • “Honestly I haven’t been to a better, smarter, nicer conference.”

    Nate Brown, Editor, American Short Fiction

  • Sessions were well designed and the presenters were great. The community of attendees was universally warm and friendly.

    DC Conference Attendee 2023

  • “The conference lived up to its name: I received the practical advice about writing that I was hoping to receive..”

    Washington DC Conference Attendee 2018

  • “Over the course of the day, I found opportunities both to dig in to topics I’m familiar with and to get a beginner level overview of something new to me.”

    Pittsburgh Conference Attendee 2019

 Literary Magazines and Small Presses

  • Autofocus Literary is a publisher of artful autobiographical writing in any form: personal essay, memoir, confessional poetry, journals & diaries, letters & e-mails, bits & pieces of each of these, and other work that makes art from your life. We publish a book imprint, an online journal, and a podcast. The imprint, Autofocus Books, specializes in work that fits, and occasionally stretches, the boundaries of our interest in literary autobiography. We launched in early 2022 and currently publish six to eight books a year.

  • The Baltimore Review, founded in 1996, is a literary journal publishing the poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction of writers from across the U.S. and beyond. 

  • Barrelhouse is a literary organization that puts out a print magazine, runs a small press, organizes the writers conference Conversations & Connections, the retreat Writer Camp, and online Write-Ins, and publishes reviews, interviews, and issues online.

  • At Chestnut Review we understand that it is hard to write and create, and even harder to navigate the publishing world. We support “stubborn artists” (writers, poets, and visual artists) with a timely response to submissions, professional payments, and communication and kindness throughout the publishing process. We offer opportunities to learn and grow like feedback from our talented staff and editors and international retreats, so you can get the knowledge you need to improve your craft and build your career.


    Here’s a few of our achievements:

    • We’ve paid over $100,000 to artists and staff over 24 quarterly issues and 12 chapbooks.

    • Our staff, currently around 70 people, hails from all over—every continent except Antarctica.

    • Each and every piece we publish goes through a multivocal rating process with discussion.

    • We currently have three Best of the Net finalists and three Best Small Fictions winners.

  • fifth wheel press is an independent community-focused publisher of art and writing by queer, trans, and gender variant creatives.

  • Gargoyle magazine was founded in 1976 by Russell Cox, Richard Peabody, and Paul Pasquarella. By 1977, Peabody was the only member of the original triumvirate left. He ran the mag until 1990 with several co-editors through the years, most notably Gretchen Johnsen (1979-1986) and Peggy Pfeiffer (1988-1990). Based in the Washington, D.C., metro area, Gargoyle was dedicated to printing work by unknown poets and fiction writers, as well as seeking out the overlooked or neglected. The magazine archive is housed in the Special Collections at George Washington University’s Gelman Library in DC (some back issues are still available to the public as well—read on). The mag was on something of an extended hiatus as of 1990 and resurfaced in 1997.

  • In A Flash publishes creative nonfiction of up to 500 words, written to theme. We feature one author and their piece in each issue, along with a craft Q&A about their work. We love working in flash - the electric way a single sentence, a single short paragraph, a single phrase can change the way you view yourself and the world in the span of a moment. We’re excited to create more opportunities for short flash nonfiction in the literary world!

  • Necessary Fiction publishes a new book review each Monday, a featured short story each Wednesday, our Research Notes series on Fridays, and occasional interviews, essays, and other surprises. We can also be found on Bluesky and less often these days on Twitter. We also have a newsletter to help you keep up with what we’ve been publishing.

  • The Offing is an online literary magazine publishing creative writing in all genres and art in all media.

    The Offing publishes work that challenges, experiments, provokes — work that pushes literary and artistic forms and conventions.

    The Offing is a place for new and emerging writers to test their voices, and for established writers to test their limits.

  • Poet Lore: America's oldest poetry magazine, publishing in print since 1889, Poet Lore is a biannual journal of poetry, featuring the finest in contemporary writing. Each issue features a curated folio of work from a select guest editor alongside poems from our general selections. We champion innovative and experimental poetic forms, from prose sequences to poems that utilize negative space on the page, and feature poems that broaden the spectrum of what poetry is and can be.

  • Riot in Your Throat is an independent poetry press publishing fierce, feminist poetry.

  • Santa Fe Writer’s Project was founded in 1998 by Andrew Gifford and is dedicated to artistic preservation, recognizing exciting new authors, and bringing out of print work back to the shelves through an eclectic catalog of fiction and creative nonfiction, an online quarterly journal, and an annual Awards Program that has been judged by writers such as Benjamin Percy, Emily St. John Mandel, Jayne Anne Phillips, Robert Olen Butler, and many others. Find out more at www.sfwp.com.

  • Stanchion is an independent quarterly print literary magazine and book press founded in the suburbs of Philadelphia during the tumultuous summer of 2020 by editor-in-chief and one-man band, Jeff Bogle. The magazine is printed on thick uncoated A5 paper and features short stories, flash fiction, CNF, poetry, one-act plays, drawings, collage art, and black & white photography.

    Stanchion is an inclusive space, a paying publication and press with no fees, and is a safe home for diverse voices from around the globe. (partner press incentive: issues 16 and 17, plus two bookmarks).

  • Story is a tri-annual print publication devoted to the complex and diverse world of short fiction. Since 1931, work that originally appeared in Story has been reprinted dozens of times in editions of The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. 

  • Taco Bell Quarterly is the literary magazine for the Taco Bell Arts and Letters. We’re a reaction against everything. The gatekeepers. The taste-makers. The hipsters. Health food. Artists Who Wear Cute Scarves. Bitch-ass Wendy’s. We seek to demystify what it means to be literary, artistic, important, and elite. We welcome writers and artists of all merit, whether you’re published in The Paris Review, rejected from The Paris Review, or DGAF what The Paris Review is. First and foremost, TBQ is about great writing. It’s about provoking and existing among the white noise of capitalism. We embrace the spectrum of trash to brilliance. Taco Bell Quarterly has tens of thousands of readers. We’ve been interviewed or mentioned in Vox, Salon, Food and Wine Magazine, Mental Floss, Yahoo, The Guardian, The New York Post, Publisher’s Weekly, Literary Hub, Bon Appetit and dozens more.

  • Washington Writers’ Publishing House is a non-profit, cooperative literary organization that has published over 100 volumes of poetry since 1975 as well as fiction and nonfiction. The press sponsors three annual competitions for writers living in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and the winners of each category (one each in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction) comprise our annual slate. In 2021, WWPH launched an online literary journal, WWPH WRITES to expand our mission to further the creative work of writers in our region. In 2024, WWPH launched our biennial works in translation series. More about the Washington Writers' Publishing House at www.washingtonwriters.org

  • Yellow Arrow Publishing is a Baltimore-based independent non-profit press that supports and inspires writers and artists identifying as women through publication and access to the literary arts. Women’s voices have historically been underrepresented in literature, and we aim to elevate those voices and stories through our programs and publications. Yellow Arrow publishes a biannual journal in print and PDF, an annual online journal celebrating Baltimore creatives, and multiple chapbooks each year; offers a rich and affordable program of online workshops; and holds readings and other special events in Baltimore and beyond. See the Yellow Arrow website and @yellowarrowpublishing on social media for more.

American University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program is our host for the conference.

For more than 30 years, writers have come to American University to develop their work and exchange ideas in the District’s only creative writing MFA program.

Our graduate workshops provide a rigorous yet supportive environment where students explore a range of approaches to the art and craft of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As an MFA student at American University, you are free to pursue a single genre or explore several. You will acquire a deeper understanding of your own work and hone your skills in a collaborative setting. This two-year, 36-credit-hour MFA program integrates writing, literary journalism, translation, and the study of literature to prepare students for a range of career possibilities. Write, give feedback, and receive guidance from a close-knit community of respectful peers and faculty.

In the MFA program, you'll find lawyers, military veterans, musicians, teachers, and business executives who are passionate about the written word. In addition to our prestigious Visiting Writers Series, our MFA program publishes Folio, a nationally recognized literary journal sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences at American University in Washington, DC. Since 1984, we have published original creative work by both new and established authors. For more information, contact us at lit@american.edu.

Speed Dating With Editors is a 10 minute, 1-on-1 workshop with an editor

With your registration, you get one ticket to “Speed Dating with Editors,” a 10 minute, 1-on-1 meeting with a literary magazine or small press editor where you’ll receive direct feedback about your work.

What works best?

We’ve found that the following things work best: a flash story or essay, the first few pages of a longer story or essay, or a poem.

Paper!

It's easiest for the editors if they're reading paper, so please print out and bring along copies of whatever you intend to workshop

We’ll match you up.

The logistics and timing don’t allow for you to choose the editor you’d like to work with. We’ll make sure nonfiction work is read by nonfiction editors, poetry by poetry editors, etc, but the situation doesn't allow for everybody to choose their editor. You’ll be matched up with an editor by our volunteers.

Location and Logistics

The conference will be held at American University’s Kerwin Hall

Address

Ward Circle Bldg, Kerwin Hall
4400 Massachusetts Ave NW #270
Washington, DC 20016

Google Map:

Click here to open the map in a new window

Parking and Directions and Other Logistics:

Parking, walking directions, wi-fi, and eventually food and coffee information are available on this Google document. We’ll continue to update this doc with relevant information as we get closer to the conference.

Brought to you by Barrelhouse

Conversations and Connections is organized by Barrelhouse, an all-volunteer literary nonprofit. Barrelhouse produces a biannual print magazine and manages a small press that prints several books each year. Barrelhouse also manages a vibrant website constantly updated with new poetry, prose, and essays, as well as book reviews and literary ephemera. In addition to Conversations and Connections, Barrelhouse organizes the writer’s retreat Writer Camp, and weekly online Write-Ins, a generative “together alone” writing practice.