Founded in 2012 in Florida as a micro press publishing two books per year, Trio House Press is now based in Minneapolis and releases twelve titles annually. “Our mission is to publish voices and perspectives that are underrepresented in the larger literary conversation and to publish works that encourage readers to develop empathy and understanding of experiences, issues, and problems beyond their own,” says Kris Bigalk, Trio House’s executive editor and publisher. The press publishes mainly poetry but in 2023 also launched the annual Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction. In 2026 the press will publish ten poetry books and two nonfiction works. Recent titles include Martheaus Perkins’s debut poetry collection, The Grace of Black Mothers, which was published in July 2025, and Samina Najmi’s essay collection Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, which was published in October and explores the author’s life in Pakistan, England, and the United States.
Trio House Press is open until March 31 for poetry submissions through two annual contests, the Trio Award for First or Second Book and the Louise Bogan Award for Excellence in Poetry; the press is open for creative nonfiction submissions through the Aurora Polaris Award until May 15. There is a $25 entry fee for all contests. Trio House will also hold an open reading period for manuscripts of poetry, creative nonfiction, and translation in June, with a $25 reading fee for any writers who earn more than $50,000 per year. The fee is waived for any writers who earn less than $50,000 and for those who entered one of the annual contests but did not win. As head of an independent press, Bigalk observes trends in the wider publishing landscape that she hopes to resist. “AI-generated writing and art is infiltrating publishing in both obvious and not so obvious ways, and we are doing all we can to ensure that our books are 100 percent human-generated,” she says. “We are firm believers in the importance of honoring the work of artists, both in terms of the writing we publish and the covers of our books.”
