Submission Sunday REDUX: Cover Letters & Bios

Whooooo are you?

How are you doing, writers? Since you might be as exhausted as I am, let’s have a redux of an easily mastered part of the submission process: cover letters and bios. This post was originally sent out on Sunday, January 22, 2023, but I’ve updated the upcoming deadlines at the end. Bios are pretty straightforward, but I’ll offer some tips before we dive into the controversial world of cover letters.

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Bios

An easy way to think about the bio is that you won’t need one that stands alone until your piece has been accepted for publication. When publications mention bios, they’re usually referencing the contributor bios that are included at the end of your published work or at the back of the issue. That said, there are still some suggestions to keep in mind.

1. Write your bio in third person.

2. Keep it short.

3. There’s an easy formula: Offer a big picture introduction, list details relevant to the publication (education, venues where published, awards, etc.), and close with something memorable and personal, such as this bio I submitted to accompany a reading at The Echo in Los Angeles awhile back.

Chris Daley is co-director of Writing Workshops LA and Lecturer in Writing at Caltech. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Collagist, Crony, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and various essay collections, including the forthcoming Norton anthology of short nonfiction, Brief Encounters. She is thrilled to read from the same stage where she’s seen Mudhoney and Savages.

4. It’s a good practice to have multiple bios of different lengths, ranging from 25 words to 150. The publication (or event or someone else making the request) will often specify how long they want the bio to be.

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Cover Letters

There is a clear difference of opinion among editors as to how important it is to have an effective cover letter. Some editors think it’s crucial; some editors don’t care if you include one. (I’ll only be discussing submissions of short-form prose and poetry in this post. See this post for agent query letters.)

Before everyone used Submittable, you would send your work via an email platform or, in ancient times, by snail mail, so the lack of a cover letter was more glaring. Now, it’s just one box in a form that can be read by an editor before or after reading the submission (another debate) or not at all. Some editors find cover letters to be a gate-keeping mechanism past its expiration date.

My advice would be to always include one because otherwise, you may have missed an opportunity to make a good impression. Some things to include/consider when writing a cover letter: