Think back to the closet of your youth, and write an essay about what was inside. Let the contents of the closet become a metaphor for who you were as a child, who you might have wished to be, and who you have become.

Write a story that begins like this:  On the morning Bill Somers shot his dog, I was...

The Believer's May issue has arrived, and with it, the announcement of the magazine's literary awards for books of poetry and fiction published in 2011. The honors are given annually for poetry collections deemed by the magazine's editors to be "the finest and most deserving of greater recognition" and novels and short story collections that are the "strongest and most underappreciated of the year."

Massachusetts poet Heather Christle takes the second annual Believer Poetry Award for The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books), her "casually incandescent second collection." (Her third book, What Is Amazing, was released by Wesleyan University Press this past February.)

Author of three poetry collections himself, New York City author Ben Lerner receives the seventh annual Believer Book Award in fiction for his "hilarious and sensitive" debut novel, Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House Press). The book, which made it onto a number of best-of lists last year, was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Young Lions Fiction Award given by the New York Public Library.

Along with the winner announcements, the Believer also released a list of the books most nominated for shout-outs in its readers survey. Coming out on top in poetry are Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press), Dean Young's Fall Higher (Copper Canyon Press), and Carl Phillips's Double Shadow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which won this year's Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry. In fiction, readers' most frequent picks were The Art of Fielding (Little, Brown) by Chad Harbach, Pulitzer-nominated Swamplandia! (Knopf) by Karen Russell, and The Sisters Brothers (Ecco) by Patrick deWitt. The full account (summer reading list, anyone?) is posted on the Believer's website.

In the video below, Christle reads from her winning book at the Stain of Poetry reading series in New York City.

With the almost daily news about signifcant changes to the publishing industry, we reached out to veteran literary agent Anne Edelstein for some perspective on how things have changed and what it means. Edelstein has been an independent agent for over twenty years. Some of her clients include Mark Epstein, Jody Shields, and Russell Shorto.

POETS & WRITERS: You spent time at Harold Ober Associates, a storied agency that represented F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, the estate of Langston Hughes, etc., and has a reputation of being steeped in the past, in an older way of doing things. Tell me about your earliest days there, and as an agent. What is the most remarkable difference between then and now?

ANNE EDELSTEIN: It was probably fifteen years ago that I worked briefly at Harold Ober, really only for the matter of a few months. Yes, it was even an old way of doing business back then. I remember bringing my own computer to the office in order to have one to work on. After having already spent a few years running my own agency, mostly representing writers who were starting out, rather than estates, my pace and organizational structure was very different from that of Ober. After a few months, I realized that I preferred my own approach, and went back to my own office where I could represent foreign rights directly, keep my own files and do the bookkeeping on a computerized system, which I immediately streamlined further. 

P&W: The publishing industry is in a state of flux. For some, it's an exciting time, for others it's gloom and doom. Is right now the worst it's ever been? Or is the worst behind us? Are you hopeful? Wary?

AE: The business is indeed in a state of flux unlike ever before. There have always been phases of gloom and doom that seem to pass and then return. But this doesn't seem like a phase so much as a major shift of technology and sensibility. 

P&W: In light of evolving publishing models, do you see new roles agents must play?

AE:  Like many agents, I find myself working much harder on the development of manuscripts and proposals before allowing them out into the world, and encouraging authors to be more astute than ever about aspects of publicity and promotion, and of course dealing with authors' electronic backlist. The biggest issue is that authors need to be paid enough to allow them to continue what they do best, and therefore an openness to new venues of publishing and publicizing is essential.  The bright side is that new opportunities should continue to unfold, and that people so far still seem to appreciate a good, well-written book.

While writing poetry in a particular form can feel restrictive, it also forces you to make decisions, use words, and write lines that you might not otherwise. Look over your poetry for common features such as the number of lines and stanzas. Based on what you find, create a form—a set number of lines, a set number of stressed syllables per line, and perhaps a relationship among lines, such as having certain lines rhyme or repeat. Write five poems using this form.

To accompany our May/June 2012 issue's feature "Winners on Winning," part of our special section on writing contests, we're posting a selection of mini-interviews with prize recipients on the benefits of their awards and what they learned from winning. The second author in our series is New York City poet and fiction writer Francine Witte.

Witte most recently won the Thomas A. Wilhelmus Chapbook Award (now dubbed the Editor's Fiction Chapbook Prize) from RopeWalk Press in 2010 for a collection of short short stories titled Cold June. Also the author of three other chapbooks of poetry and short fiction—Only, Not Only (Finishing Line Press, 2012), The Wind Twirls Everything (MuscleHead Press, 2009), and First Rain, which won Pecan Grove Press's 2008 National Chapbook Competition—she speaks with us about the hands-down best aspect of winning the Wilhelmus Award and what she'd suggest to writers looking to contests as a means to publication.

How did winning RopeWalk Press's Wilhelmus Chapbook Award change your career, if at all? Were you able to do anything special with the prize money, or did you make any important connections as a result of winning?
When I saw this contest listed in Poets & Writers, and I saw that Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler was the judge, my only thought was that this would be a chance to have his eyes on my work. That was all I was really hoping for at that point. I had always thought of him as a master of the short short form. When I was subsequently informed that I was one of the ten finalists, I had to take a deep breath. What if? Of course, I didn't want to become too hopeful. At that point, I did what I suppose many people do: I made a deal with God. I promised that if I were to win, I would give the prize money to my sister, who desperately needed it as her husband had recently suffered a stroke. The news of my winning came in an e-mail with the lead paragraph [containing] the magical words of Robert Olen Butler, who called my take on the short short "brilliant" and said I was a talented writer indeed. I couldn't even breathe. I immediately called my sister and told her the good news, that the money was on its way to her. But to me, the real prize was that beautiful paragraph that I later used as a blurb on the book cover. The exposure that came from the book was amazing. I now had people blogging about me. That was really a thrill. The reviews and comments I received were positive and when you are starting out—in publishing terms—it is very important that you know people are "getting" what you are trying to do. I also had an agent contact me—a first—though he wasn't really able to do much with a collection of short short stories.

Did the award have an effect on the path you've chosen to take in your work?
Just the validation and praise I received from having Cold June win the contest and get published has helped me on those dark days when I wonder what the hell I am even doing. All writers need that. I am a high school teacher, nearing retirement, so I am thinking that when I do have enough time to write that novel, I would probably structure it in short shorts. Winning the prize and hearing the comments from people I would not have normally have heard from has told me to keep true to the style in which I write.

What advice do you have for writers looking to contests as a way to get their work into the world?
Contests are an amazing way to get your work into the world. Winning a contest definitely raises your profile as a writer and certainly adds much to your cover letter. It's a concrete credit that people do respond to. When choosing which contests to enter, you'll want to choose carefully, though. Entering contests is expensive and time-consuming. You also want to make sure that what you're submitting really is your very best work. Choose a few good ones, contests you generally think you might have a good chance of winning, and avoid a scattershot method. Like any other submission, know the journal you are sending your work to. That will save you lots of time and money.

Deadline Hollywood reports that former ICM agent Nick Harris has partnered with financing specialist Jason Traub (also his brother-in-law) to form The Story Foundation, a company that aims to "create intellectual properties that start as books with ancillary life in film, TV and other multi-platform opportunities." Harris says he plans to offer authors a higher cut of any TV and movie deals based on their books, depending on how involved they were in generating the original idea. The company will focus on young adult and "high concept commercial ideas," as Harris put it. So...what exactly are "high concept commercial ideas"? We asked literary agent Julie Barer for a quick translation. Here's what she says: "I think a 'high concept' idea is one that is easily described in one or two sentences, appeals to a broad audience (meaning both male and female readers, young and old) and is both immediately recognizable and yet sounds original and fresh. It means the story has a 'hook' that will instantly draw people in, and will be easy to pitch to media, booksellers, and the general public. It usually means the focus is more about the plot and the narrative drive/tension than about the beauty of the line-by-line writing, but it doesn't have to be." 

On a related note, Barer's Twitter feed offers news about publishing and upcoming events, and is worth a follow. In fact, we've added the Twitter feeds of all those agents included in our Literary Agents database. Take a look! But remember: It's definitely not a good idea to query an agent via social media.

Research the origins (Latin, Greek, biblical, or otherwise) of your first name and develop an alter ego for yourself based upon those origins. If your name is Alex, for example, whose origin, Alexandros, originates from the Greek root "to defend," your alter ego could be "The Defender." Free-write for twenty minutes from the perspective of that alter ego, writing about anything that comes to mind—and see what kind of patterns, ideas, or thoughts emerge.

Think about a conflict you had with someone in the past that left you feeling especially wronged or misunderstood. Write a story from the other person's perspective, fictionalizing the details of that person's character. Create the story behind why this person did what they did or said what they said.