And no, not just because I’m going to be there.  (Though I would be very pleased to see you, of course. I might even buy you a beer, if you asked very nicely.)  But because a whole bunch of amazing people and workshops and panels and magazines and DC area writers and other neat things are going to be there, too.  We all love Barrelhouse, yes? Well, Barrelhouse is one of the organizers of the Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing conference, which will be held in Washington, DC, on April 16. And here is what they have to say about why you should come:

Here are ten reasons why you should come join us:

1. For your registration fee of $65, you get: the full day conference, one book, one lit mag subscription, and one ticket to “speed dating with editors.”
2. Steve Almond is the keynote.
3. The books you can choose from are “How They Were Found” by Matt Bell, “The Bee Loud Glade” by Steve Himmer, “I Just Now Started Buying Wings” by Kim Kupperman, and “Poems Against War” by Gregg Mosson.
4. We all love bitching about literary magazines that charge a reading fee, right? Well, ALL of the money from this conference goes directly back to the participating literary magazines, as well as the organizers, who are literary magazines. It’s a win win win — a chance to hang out with other writers, meet some editors and small press superheroes, get some stuff, and give money back to the folks who are keeping the indie lit thing happening.
5. You can go out and drink with Team Barrelhouse after the conference! Or before! Or during!
6. Our breakout sessions include craft workshops by Michael Kimball (“The One Hour MFA”), Matt Kirkpatrick (“Experimental Fiction”), Matt Bell (“Everything Worth Saying is Worth Saying Twice: The Power of Repitition”), Rae Bryant (“Writing Prosetry”), Kim Kupperman (“Creating Dimensionality in Literary Nonfiction”), and Susan McCallum Smith (“The Critics Eye, the Editor’s Pen”).
7. Speed dating! Which means you get to sit down with an editor, who will provide immediate feedback on a poem, flash fiction piece, or a few pages of a story or essay.
8. Our breakout sessions include panel discussions on writing ethnicity, flash fiction, what editors hate/love, social marketing, small versus large presses, using fiction techniques in writing nonfiction, the poetic sentence, and debut authors and how they got there.
9. Okay, all our panels are going to be pretty great, but if you’re a Barrelhouse person then you’ll probably understand how totally badass the flash fiction panel is going to be. It includes Smokelong Quarterly’s Tara Laskowski, Emprise Review’s Amber Sparks, Necessary Fiction’s Steve Himmer, and FlashFiction.net’s Randall Brown. That’s a murderer’s row of short short fiction right there.
10. These literary magazines will be there: Baltimore Review, Barrelhouse, Big Lucks, The Collagist, Emprise Review, Everyday Genius, Gargoyle, Gettysburg Review, JMWW, Lines + Stars, Moon Milk Review, Necessary Fiction, No Tell Motel, Noo Journal, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Smartish Pace, Smokelong Quarterly, Twelve Stories

Convinced? Near DC? Willing to come near DC? Sign up here!