How to Write a Rejection Letter

A gift from me to ye

Following best practices, I’ve designed a template for you in case you need to make a form letter rejection email to send to all the people who submit poetry to your hypothetical lit mag.

Dear Robbie Q.,

First of all, we would like to thank you again for entrusting us with your work as we considered it for publication in the next issue of Mon Petit magazine. We would also like to apologize for the extended time it took to review it: we really do read each submission carefully and because the pandemic significantly impacted our normal review process we had to hold on to your work for far longer than we ever would have wanted to. We are sorry.

Unfortunately, after careful consideration, we have made the hard choice to pass on your poem “The Booty Tastes Strange.” We know this is not the response you were hoping for; as writers ourselves, we acknowledge how exhausting it can be submitting your art to scrutiny and constant rejection. Please wait a year before submitting to us again. 

This response is in no way a reflection on the quality of your writing; honestly we aren’t even sure what we like from one minute to the next. The subjective nature of art means that your poetry might not only be transcendent to another set of readers, but we ourselves might have liked it more had we read it after a big meal or a nap. There’s no way of knowing. 

Thank you for reading Mon Petit - as a token of our gratitude please accept 15% off anything in our store using the code DECLINED15. And enjoy our weekly newsletter that we automatically signed you up for. 

We are grateful for your efforts and wish you luck and courage placing this poem elsewhere. Keep writing!

Sincerely, 

Mon Petit editors