Successful Queries: Emily Forland and “We Loved to Run,” by Stephanie Reents
Find a successful query for a short story collection, by Stephanie Reents, that eventually led to a published novel.
Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter for a short story collection, by Stephanie Reents, to Emily Forland that would eventually lead to the publication of the novel We Loved to Run.
Stephanie Reents is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir chronicling her journey into the strange void at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice received an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction. Reents received a BA from Amherst College, where she ran on the cross country team all four years; a BA from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; and an MFA from the University of Arizona. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Here's Stephanie's query to her agent:
Dear Emily,
Thank you so much for agreeing to look at my collection, Creatures of the Kingdom. I'm sorry you had so much trouble reaching me -
Many of the stories in this collection have been published in magazines: "In Lamu," "Roommates," and "Disquisition on Tears" appeared in Epoch, and "Disquisition on Tears" was selected for this year's O. Henry Anthology; "Love for Women" appeared in Gulf Coast and "Trespassers" is in the current issue of Pleiades. I have about a half dozen other finished stories, some which have been published, that I'm not including in this collection. I'd be happy to show to you if you'd be interested. (I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that while I've thought a lot about what makes these particular stories work together, I'm open to other visions.)
A little about me: I grew up in Boise, Idaho, did my undergraduate work at Amherst College and then continued on to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After working as a reporter in rural Idaho and on public education reform in New York City, I completed an MFA in fiction at the University of Arizona and then was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. I'm currently teaching at Franklin & Marshall College.
Please let me know if there's anything else you need. And again, thank you for taking the time to read my collection.
Best,
Stephanie Reents
Check out Stephanie's We Loved to Run here:
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Emily's thoughts on Stephanie's query:
In truth, I was already very interested in Stephanie’s work at the point that she’d written me, because Laura Furman, then the editor of the O.Henry stories and a connoisseuse of short fiction, reached out to say that she thought she had encountered an original talent. It was a memorable, surrealist story of Stephanie's that was included in the collection. And, of course, by the time an author has a story chosen for the O.Henry, it’s an indicator they’re very far along.
But I also noted the quality of other publications she had under her belt, and that she was coming out of the Stegner program. Stephanie’s letter, while brief and crisp, also impressed me with the way it managed to convey that while she'd already put a lot of thought into the structure of her book, she was also collaborative, and open to feedback. A nice quality in a prospective author!
Plus she’d already lived in a variety of landscapes and had an array of working experiences—it’s a good sign when a writer has an interesting life. All that and a Rhodes scholar too!
As an agent, it’s noteworthy looking back at how it all unfolds. Stephanie’s first query to me was in 2006. She published a collection of stories, THE KISSING LIST, a collection that took the queried collection as a jumping off point, in 2012. Then in 2018 there was a book about reading and re-reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, I MEANT TO KILL YE—and now her wonderful first novel, WE LOVED TO RUN, is forthcoming this summer in 2025.
Stephanie's thoughts on the submission process:
Seven years into writing pretty steadily (through grad school, a fellowship, and my first teaching job), I decided to try to find an agent. At that point, I had published a handful of stories (with many more finished ones sitting on my computer), been selected for the 2006 O. Henry Prize anthology, and started writing a novel.
Because this was the early 2000s, querying meant sending letters to agents via the US Postal system, waiting to hear back from them (which sometimes came as a phone call, sometimes an email, and perhaps even a letter), and then if I were lucky and they were interested, packing up even more of my fiction to drop in the mail.
Many agents politely passed on my work until a guardian angel (in the form of Laura Furman, who was then editor of The O. Henry Prize Stories) asked me whether I needed an agent and generously introduced me to Emily Forland, who has been the best possible person to have in my corner for the past almost 20 years.
*****
Emily Forland has been an agent at Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents in NYC for over ten years; previously, she was an agent at The Wendy Weil Agency. She represents a wide variety of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, including prize winners and book club picks, and has a special place in her heart for distinctive writing that jumps off the page.