Trio House Press, a new poetry outfit in Staten Island, New York, is accepting entries for two book awards. The prize for a first or second poetry collection, judged by Ross Gay, will award publication and one thousand dollars. A second one-thousand-dollar award, judged by Michael Waters, will grant publication of a manuscript by a poet in any stage of her career.

In addition to publication and the monetary prize, the press will also offer winners a role behind the scenes at Trio House. The press has adopted a cooperative structure, so winners will become part of publishing operations for a twenty-four month period (similar to the model employed by, for example, Alice James Books and Calypso Editions) and be involved, each joining one of four committees, in the publication of subsequent books. (Trio House plans to release three titles a year.)

This year's judge in emerging poetry, Gay is the author of two collections, Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). He is a Cave Canem fellow and a professor at Indiana University and Drew University's low-residency MFA program.

General prize judge Waters, also a teacher in Drew University's program (as well as a professor at Monmouth University in his home state of New Jersey), is author of ten collections, most recently Gospel Night (BOA Editions, 2011). He is also coeditor of the most recent edition of Contemporary American Poetry, published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin.

For both of Trio House's competitions, poets residing in the United States may submit manuscripts of forty-eight to seventy pages with an entry fee of twenty-five dollars by April 30. Entries are accepted via Submittable (formerly Submishmash).

In the video below, Gay recites a poem at the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City.

Look through your poem drafts, notes, and writing fragments. Choose one line that you like and refine it until it feels as complete and polished as one line out of context can be. Use that line as a refrain in a new poem. When you've completed a decent draft, try writing an additional draft of the poem without the line, using it instead as the title.

Think about big and small regrets you have in your life—things you wish you had done, people you wish you had treated better, directions you wish you'd gone. Draw a chart that represents a hierarchy of your regrets. It can be simple or decorative, straightforward or complex. Then write an essay that explores what you see when you look at it.

Conjure someone you haven't seen or talked to in over ten years. Imagine you receive a phone call from this person today. Why are they calling? What do they want? Write a story about it.

Take a walk that you know well—through your neighborhood, around the block where you work, or your route to the train or bus. Study this familiar landscape carefully, and try to find a detail that you hadn’t noticed before—a piece of graffiti, a certain row of trees, the pattern in which the sidewalk is cracked. Write about this new observation, small as it may be, starting with physical description and then allowing your thoughts to wander.

The website Brain Pickings posted a video version of Kurt Vonnegut's eight tips for how to write a great short story. Choose a draft of one of your unfinished stories and apply Vonnegut's advice during the revision process.