JSC Fall 2012 Authors Series!

The Art of the Literary Magazine Cover Letter

Michael Nye, the Managing Editor at the stellar The Missouri Review, offers some advice on how to put your best foot foward when submitting work to a literary journal (especially when sending to a literary journal as revered as The Missouri Review, who is inundated each month with submissions):

. . . Every submission to a literary magazine should come with a cover letter. . . . It’s like wearing a suit to an interview. A submission to a literary magazine is a professional transaction—treat it like one. Try showing up for a job interview in a Hawaiian shirt and basketball shorts. It probably won’t go well.

Cover letters should include all your contact information. Name, address, contact information, the titles of your piece(s). This is pretty simple. After that, things get a little dicey.

Should the cover letter be addressed to a specific person? Dear Editors, Dear Editor, Dear Mr. Morgan, Dear Dr. Morgan, Dear Speer Morgan, Dear Dr. Morgan, Dear Speer Laddie, To Whom It May Concern, Dear Intern Reading This, Dear Fiction Editors, Dear Fiction Editor, What’s Up Doc?, and so on … the possibilities may go on and on. Honestly? I can’t say any of these are wrong when sent to The Missouri Review. We’re going to read the work one way or the other. It does help to know if your submission is, say, fiction or nonfiction, but other than that, it really doesn’t matter. We understand. But there are magazines out there that will get their shorts in a knot if you don’t acknowledge the editors doctorate or spell a name right. Again: follow each magazine’s specific guidelines. [...]

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Got an MFA? Need a Job? Consider the Creative Agency

Over at The Millions, Hope Mills explores an alternative job path for creative writers graduating with M.F.A. degrees -- though the advice is also useful for those graduating with B.F.A. degrees in creative writing:

When I graduated with my MFA earlier this year, I routinely fielded the various versions of What are you doing next? Of course, what people really wanted to know was what I was going to do for a job. Frankly, I’d never considered doing anything other than what I had been doing — planning and creating communication packages at the creative agency where I’ve worked for the last decade. The guys in Mad Men did it. So could I. . . .

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M.A. and M.F.A.: The Final Word

John Poch

Undergraduate creative writers thinking about grad school and wondering what on earth the M.A. and M.F.A. is, and about the difference between them, should find poet John Poch's article "M.A. and M.F.A.: The Final Word," published recently by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Journal, extremely useful:

So what’s the difference? In general, I believe many see the M.F.A. as a degree that is more writer-ly.  In other words, the M.F.A. student aims to write literature more than writing about literature during his/her term. Obviously, any discrepancies will vary program by program. The difference between an M.A. and an M.F.A. is probably as vast as the difference between any two given M.A. programs. Or the difference between any two M.F.A. programs. Auburn, UC Davis, the University of Chicago, Western Washington, and many other programs still offer the M.A. as their signature writing degree. You can peruse the AWP Guide to Programs or the NewPages website to see the myriad possibilities. 

The only actual difference might be that the M.A. does not usually claim to represent itself as the terminal degree, where the M.F.A. definitely does. Even so, with the proliferation of creative writing Ph.D. programs (and M.F.A. programs—there are hundreds), there is a general perception that the M.F.A. has lost some of its luster. This has to do with a variety of issues and problems including but not limited to a decline in the quality of general education (especially of reading/writing) at our nation’s high schools and universities. When I finished my M.F.A. at the University of Florida, William Logan mentioned to a few of us we need not pursue a Ph.D. We now were in possession of the terminal degree, he said. But I knew I needed more. Not that the MFA@UFL wasn’t a good program; it certainly was (I can name around ten poets within a three-year span who ended up publishing books with good presses). Rather, my earlier education was primarily physics/engineering-oriented, and I had a lot of holes to fill in my reading after the M.F.A. I felt I needed more literary training, more teaching experience, and some time to get that first book published. The Ph.D. at the University of North Texas ended up bolstering my writing and my preparation for teaching in academia. It is evident that Ph.D. graduates are often more prepared to teach and have much more solid publishing credentials than do M.F.A. graduates due to more time spent in the classroom on both sides of the podium. No doubt there are exceptions to the rule. Now many M.F.A. programs are fortifying their degrees by offering three or four year programs. MFA@UFL is one of those programs. Yet the writing degree at Boston University remains a one-year program with their enviable Global Fellowships recently added to strengthen their offerings. That kind of intensity seems impossibly wonderful to me, though if I could choose any program I wanted perhaps it would be for a longer stay at a program like Cornell or Arkansas. But writing students don’t get to choose very often. Due to the numbers of applicants, many good writers are turned away from the best programs. It is hardly a mistake to consider the M.A. program either as a backup or even as a first choice for the student who realizes she isn’t coming in with a book nearly completed. 

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