Brought to You by Barrelhouse

Conversations and Connections is organized by Barrelhouse, an all-volunteer literary nonprofit that 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, and the podcast Book Fight.

Barrelhouse also manages this conference in Pittsburgh in the Fall and DC in the Spring, as well as the writer's retreat Writer Camp. The 2019 conference will mark thirteen years in DC.

In 2016, Barrelhouse created the Barrelhouse Amplifier, a $1,500 cash grant to emerging literary organizations that is sponsored by Submittable. Recipients of the Amplifier have been Girls Write Pittsburgh, which empowers teen girls in the Pittsburgh area to find their voice through creative writing, Fiyah, a magazine of black speculative fiction, and the Appalachian Prison Book Project, which provides books and writing services to prisoners in Appalachia.