Winning Your Way to Publication 🏆

🎙️ New episode: Deborah Derrickson Kossmann on her contest win for "Lost Found Kept"

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May 08, 2025

Hey, Bleeders!

This week on the pod, we’ve got a game-changing minisode with publishing inspo. I’m spotlighting Deborah Derrickson Kossmann, the winner of Trio House Press’s inaugural Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award and author of the beautiful new memoir Lost Found Kept.

Here’s how she went from querying hell to happily published—and how you can, too.

📘 What’s the book about?

Lost Found Kept explores the painful and complex terrain of Deborah’s mother’s hoarding disorder—something she didn’t fully confront until after her mother’s death. As a psychologist, she found herself reckoning with the question of how she had missed—or avoided—seeing the extent of the problem. The book follows her emotional excavation of the family home after 30 years, blending past and present to trace both the origins of the disorder and her own evolution. Written during lockdown (“COVID was good for one thing,” she joked), the memoir taps into family dynamics, trauma, and identity.

😩 The querying struggle is real

Like many debut authors, Deborah faced the gauntlet of querying agents after wrapping up her manuscript—and it wasn’t pretty. She described it as “the worst experience ever,” with a laugh. Relatable, right? After a few agent introductions led nowhere, she had a realization: “I’m old and I don’t want to be spending 10 years trying to query this book around!” So she wisely changed course.

💪 Small presses FTW

Deborah began researching and submitting to indie and university presses, doing her homework to make sure they were legit (pro tip: check for CLMP membership!). She also started entering contests—one of which changed everything.

“A friend of mine that I had met at one of my residencies had published his poetry books through Trio House Press. And so I knew the books were beautiful.” When she saw they were running their first creative nonfiction prize in 2023, she figured, why not? She submitted—and promptly forgot about it.

Then came the surprise: she was a finalist. “I’m like, what award?” she recalled.

A few weeks later, in early October, she found out she’d won!

❤️ Working with Trio House Press

Deborah speaks highly of her experience with Trio House. She loves the book’s cover and layout and appreciated the collaborative process. “They’re learning too,” she said, since her memoir was their first nonfiction title, “but they’re great. They’re very committed and very involved.” She also noted having more creative control than she expected.

More control, a gorgeous cover, and a team that gets your book? That’s the dream.

➡️ Trio House Press is a small but mighty press doing gorgeous work out of my home state of Minnesota and their CNF contest is open for submissions again. The deadline to apply to the 2025 Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction is May 15, so if you’ve got a memoir manuscript ready to go, I highly encourage you to throw your hat in the ring. This could be your shot.

Apply to Aurora Polaris

🎧 Listen to Deborah’s minisode for the full story.

And stay tuned because I’ll be releasing Deborah’s full interview in the next month or two.

Happy bleeding!
Courtney

I’m teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:

So… ROLL CALL! 🗣️

Have you had writing contest success? Any good ones on your radar? Please share in the comments below!

The Bleeders

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