Literary Journal Submissions

With a Sample Cover Letter

As MFA students, my classmates and I often hoped our professors would share with us the glamorous and gritty details of their publication experiences. Some of them obliged us from time to time, usually with self-effacing humor, and on occasion, impressive vitriol.

I remember one professor expressing fury over a badly handled rejection from a literary journal (the editors sent her two rejection letters for the same poetry submission over the course of a couple of years, apparently not realizing they’d already rejected these poems). We were encouraged by their successes and titillated by the stories of incompetence and rudeness they’d been subjected to.  

On the whole, however, in that era (more than 25 years ago now), the party line was this: we were in the program to learn how to write, and it was ill-advised to spend too much time thinking about publication and our incipient brilliant careers. For the most part I agreed and still agree with this point of view—I’m relieved the focus was on the practice of writing rather than on the business of being a writer.

Nonetheless, by the time one finishes a writing program, I do think it’s a good idea to have at least a rudimentary understanding of how the publishing industry works, of what editors and agents do and what they’re looking for in the writers they choose to work with, how small and large presses operate, how and when to submit one’s work to journals and book contests, among other topics.