Agents & Editors Recommend

A dependable source of professional and creative advice, this regular series features anecdotes, insights, tips, recommended reading and viewing for writers, and more from leading agents and editors.

Erika Goldman of Bellevue Literary Press

7.26.23

For me, the most important thing is the writer’s voice. A synopsis and outline for a nonfiction submission can be very helpful, but a proposal should have a sample introduction and at least a chapter to communicate the quality of the writing—if the finished manuscript isn’t available. With fiction, however, although a sentence in a cover letter regarding the subject matter is welcome, nothing causes me to glaze over more quickly than a plot summary. I read for style, not for plot. If you’re submitting a novel or a story collection, I will want to have full access to it.

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Jennifer Maritza McCauley of Pleiades

7.12.23

When I’m reading submissions, I’m searching for a writer who trusts their own voice and their grip on the craft. I’m looking for work that feels fresh and wildly new, that feels like no other author could have written this particular piece, that makes the familiar deliciously unfamiliar and unique. I want characters who bounce off the page and sound, talk, and act like fully fleshed out people whom I might someday meet—or might not want to meet. I’m hoping to truly “see” the setting and note how lush and immersive it is.

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Lily Meyer of Relegation Books

6.28.23

My motto as an editor started out as a design standard in the U.S. Navy: Keep it simple, stupid! I like to read writing and translation that’s kept simple. I do not mean that I am a minimalist, or that I only want to work with minimalist writers. I do mean that I love encountering a mind that shines, bright and unobstructed, from the page.

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Dorian Karchmar of William Morris Endeavor

6.2.23

It’s important for writers who aspire to be published by a mainstream house to have an understanding of where their work fits in relation to like-minded books and authors publishing today.   

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Stephanie G’Schwind of Colorado Review and the Center for Literary Publishing

5.24.23

Don’t labor over your cover letter when submitting to a journal or magazine! I mean, of course read the publication’s guidelines, and if they’re asking for something specific, by all means provide it. But honestly, the best cover letter is the simplest cover letter. If you address your submission to the editor by name, great. “Dear Editor” works too. Every editor will tell you they’ve received submissions addressed to another magazine—oops! It happens, we get it. I’ve even published a couple of those submissions. It’s not cause for rejection, but try not to do it.

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Michelle Dotter of Dzanc Books

5.10.23

One piece of advice I like to give aspiring authors is to think seriously before you start querying presses—or even before you start writing—about what publishing success means to you. There are so many approaches to getting your work published, and which one you pursue should depend on your individual goals. And these goals can absolutely change throughout the course of your career, or even project to project.

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Regina Brooks of Serendipity Literary Agency

4.26.23

Since its inception in 2000, poetry has been in the DNA of Serendipity Literary Agency, which represents poets such as jessica Care moore and Marilyn Nelson, among other writers. In my work to stay current and keep my finger on the pulse of the market, I’ve noticed three big opportunities bubbling up and intensifying in the poetry world that poets should have on their radar:

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Joshua Bodwell of Godine

3.29.23

At some point during the pandemic, I wrote a note to myself on a yellow Post-it and stuck it to my computer monitor: “I’m most interested in narrative nonfiction that feels like the author who wrote it is the only person who could have written it.” This may seem like a basic truth, but as my friend Ann Beattie once said, “It’s helpful to know to begin at the most simple level—even if I don’t always remember to do that.” 

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Macaulay Glynn of Harpur Palate and the New York Quarterly

3.15.23

When submitting to a journal, don’t pay too much attention to the editors’ aesthetic statement. It’s better to read, if possible, the most recent two issues of the journal and what the members of the current editorial staff themselves have published to get a sense of whether the conversation you’re having with the world is anything like the one they’re having. I rarely find aesthetic statements on a journal’s website useful in any meaningful way unless the journal in question has a very specific formal schtick.

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Margaret Sutherland Brown of Folio Literary Management

3.1.23

I often encounter developing fiction writers and memoirists who have voice in spades but who haven’t yet acquired full control over their story and characters. An inimitable writerly voice is the holiest of holies for all of us. But voice without accompanying mastery over the story is not enough, whether your work is a commercial thriller or capital-L “Literary.” A reader can sense when a writer is still puzzling out the meaning of the story they’re telling and, as a result, when the characters aren’t as dimensional and rich as they should be.

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