Conversations and Connections Writing Conference Moves to Mason's Arlington Campus in Spring 2016

Conversations and Connections Writing Conference Moves to Mason's Arlington Campus in Spring 2016

Conversations and Connections, a one-day writing conference organized by Barrelhouse magazine, will move to the Arlington campus at George Mason University in the spring of 2016. Sponsored by the English department, the conference brings together writers, editors, and publishers in a friendly and supportive environment. The primary aim of the event is to provide writers at all stages of development with practical advice on writing and publishing. The conference has taken place at various locations in the DC metro area for the past nine years. The Spring 2016 edition of the conference will take place on April 23rd. 

The conference features craft sessions and moderated panels on fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Past session titles have included: “To the Bone: The Power of Plain Language in Poems,” “Kind of Based on True Events: Using Real Life in Your Fiction,” “Let Me Show You Around: Representing Place in Nonfiction,” and “Ask the Agent: The Process of Finding and Securing a Literary Agent.”

In addition, every attendee receives a ticket to speed dating with the editors, a ten-minute meeting with a participating press or journal editor who will review the first two pages of a story or essay, a novel synopsis, or a few poems. Editors provide feedback and sometimes suggest possible venues for publication. Most importantly, it allows attendees to actually meet an editor.   

What’s more, the conference includes four featured authors (a novelist, a short story writer, a poet, and an essayist), and all attendees leave with one of their books as part of the admission fee. Attendees also receive a subscription to one of the participating journals. Past choices have included Barrelhouse, Potomac Review, Gettysburg Review, The Believer, Mid-American Review, StoryQuarterly, and many others.

The day ends with a boxed wine happy hour where conference attendees can talk to each other, panelists, and editors.