I kind of like literary journals asking for background on the story

Almost every literary journal a writer might send a story to for consideration will generally tell you that all they want in a cover letter is a brief statement of facts and a concise, third-person biography. Most advice will tell you the same thing. Just say your name, the title of your story and a word count, your previous publications, and then say thank you for considering it. No cute stuff, no pontificating on the meaning of your story or what compelled you to write it. 

Today, I submitted a story to the Gordon Square Review, a little journal in Cleveland, which is not far from where I grew up. They did something unusual in their instructions for submitting a story:

We request that no cover letter or author bio be included in your submission. Instead, please share with Gordon Square Review what the story is about, the writing process of the story, and any context you believe is important to know while reading story.

Explaining something about your story before someone reads it might sound like a perfectly natural thing to a non-writer, but it was so unexpected, it made me stop to think why I found it so surprising. If you're writing a novel, the people looking at it generally want a whole lot of explanatory stuff before they even look at the manuscript. Often, they only look at the summary or pitch. Not so with short stories, though. Is it because short stories are high literature, and readers feel the story should be able to speak for itself? Or is it because journals are so swamped, they kind of want to know who else has already published you so they can cheat and use that as help for knowing whether they should pay more attention?

In any event, I really liked that Gordon Square did this. That's strange, because I hate writing pitches and summaries for the novels I've sent in. For some reason, these very informal directions for a cover letter to the short story, though, felt fresh and almost enjoyable to follow. 

I don't get a lot of comments on this blog considering the number of readers, which might be because it's such a pain to put comments in, but I'd like to hear from any writers out there to see if you have opinions on whether you like instructions like this or not.