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 2024 conference is our 25th Conversations and Connections. All proceeds go to participating small presses and literary magazines, and to Barrelhouse. Learn more here.
Featured Authors Include:
Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books, 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, the National Museum of Women in the Arts. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.
Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books.
Hannah Grieco is a writer, editor, and adjunct writing professor in Washington, DC. She edits novels and prose collections at the local independent press Alan Squire Publishing, where her recent anthology “Already Gone: 40 Stories of Running Away” was released in November of 2023. Her own writing can be found in The Washington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Brevity, Craft Literary, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, and more. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.
Sheila Squillante is a writer and visual artist living in Pittsburgh. She is the author of the poetry collections, Mostly Human, winner of the 2020 Wicked Woman Book Prize from Brick House Books, and Beautiful Nerve, as well as four chapbooks of poetry: Dear Sunder, In This Dream of My Father, Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry and A Woman Traces the Shoreline. Her New and Selected is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books in 2025. Her debut essay collection, All Things Edible, Random and Odd: Essays on Grief, Love and Food, was published by CLASH Books in November, 2023. She is also co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page.