Game of the Month: Cover Letters

Though we read cover letters with interest here at CR, they don’t really play a part in our decision-making process. Cover letters are kind of like internal organs. You don’t think too much about them unless they’re bloated or causing you pain. Sometimes we’ll receive cover letters in which authors try to sell us on a submission or explain the social import of their work (“My wrenching tale of an agave-harvesting desert hermit who nurses a mistrustful, snake-bitten coyote interrogates the conflicts and complications arising in the post-capitalist global marketplace”), or they’ll claim their work will change our lives (in the same manner the inventors of  The Clapper© promised to change our lives but could never live up to the impossible dreams their infomercials engendered in our hopeful, longing bosoms). Of course, we would never dismiss a submission based on a silly cover letter, but we will admit, sometimes these hyperbolic efforts do bring us joy—especially the ones that come with photos and illustrations. In honor of the deep-down happiness a truly goofy cover letter provides, we invite you draft for us your most bombastic attempts at the genre. Make us impossible promises. Tell us it was your fiction, and not Jonas Salk, that rid America of Polio. Explain why your poems about losing your virginity in an Applebee’s restroom demonstrates the decadence and cultural decay of Western civilization better than The Wasteland.

Send us your imaginary cover letters, and we’ll award logo–emblazoned thermoses or slingpacks to our winners next week. To enter, simply post your comments on the blog by clicking the post title above. (Due to the volume of spam we receive, we have to approve each comment individually, so bear with us as we upload your entry.)