The Shiver (AKA: The Masthead)
McKenzie Lynn Tozan
Editor-In-Chief
McKenzie Lynn Tozan is a formerly Midwestern writer, transplanted to coastal Croatia. She is a published poet, novelist, and the Editor-in-Chief of Lit Shark Magazine and the Banned Book Review. She received her MFA in Poetry from Western Michigan University and her BA in English/BS in Education from Indiana University South Bend, where she began her work in publishing. Her poems have appeared in Rogue Agent, Whale Road Review, Young Ravens Review, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and Encore Magazine, among others; her book reviews and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Green Mountains Review, Memoir Mixtapes, The Life Collective, Her Journal, Motherly, and more; and she had a chapter on Australian vampire lore featured in the critical anthology, Global Perspectives on the Liminality of the Supernatural: From Animus to Zombi. McKenzie’s short horror story collection, What We Find in the Dark, and her horror novella, Black As Black, are both forthcoming from the Shiver Collective in 2024. When she’s not writing, McKenzie is spending time with her kiddos, cat, and husband; reading submissions for Lit Shark; making future plans to start a pumpkin patch on the coast (seriously); physically conditioning to start scuba-diving and swimming with sharks in spring 2024 (also seriously); stumbling her way through learning Croatian; researching local conservation projects she can get involved in; and getting back into playing piano and creating visual poetry broadsides. Basically, she’s endlessly happy. Find more on her website.
mckenzie@litshark.com
Dragan Tozan
Operations and Technical Director
Dragan received his BA in Arts and Sciences from Indiana University, where he also incidentally met McKenzie. He was always an avid reader, and reading is one of the battery-charging hobbies he has.
As the Operations and Technical Director with Lit Shark, Dragan is in charge of all daily sales, service, and technical responsibilities. If you are interested in becoming a Lit Shark partner or having your book advertized with us, he is the guy to contact!
dragan@litshark.com
Beth Mathison
Poetry Reader
Beth Mathison has work published in The Foliate Oak (including the 2008 and 2009 annual “Best Of” print editions), Haiku Journal, 365Tomorrows. com, MysteryAuthors.com, Drops of Crimson, Colored Chalk, and The Citron Review. Stories published with Untreed Reads include Mobsters for the Holidays; Criminally Hilarious Short Stories (also an audio book) and the short story romance series, Young at Heart. Her poem “My Grandmother’s Hands” was featured in Verse Wisconsin, along with a reading with Wisconsin’s first Poet Laureate (Ellen Kort).
Beth lives with her family in the Upper Midwest, and during the cold winter months, she dreams of snorkeling in the Riviera Maya.
Cherilyn Chin
Contributor
Cherilyn Chin is a marine biologist who has worked at public aquariums, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. She has held a three-day-old sea otter in the palm of her hand, cuddled with a week-old penguin chick, and gotten a painting from a giant pacific octopus. Cherilyn also has a whale shark and manta ray named after her. She enjoys writing children’s books about ocean animals, has four early-reader books (called Lily Lu to the Rescue) that came out January 1st, 2025, and has an award-winning blog, “Ocean of Hope” (https://oceanofhope.net).
Pamela Rafalow Grossman
Contributor
Pamela Rafalow Grossman lives in Brooklyn, NY, and has written for outlets such as the “Village Voice,” Time.com, OnEarth, and RollingStone.com. She is working on a short documentary about women in their nineties.
Beth Mathison
Contributor
Beth Mathison has work published in The Foliate Oak (including the 2008 and 2009 annual “Best Of” print editions), Haiku Journal, 365Tomorrows. com, MysteryAuthors.com, Drops of Crimson, Colored Chalk, and The Citron Review. Stories published with Untreed Reads include Mobsters for the Holidays; Criminally Hilarious Short Stories (also an audio book) and the short story romance series, Young at Heart. Her poem “My Grandmother’s Hands” was featured in Verse Wisconsin, along with a reading with Wisconsin’s first Poet Laureate (Ellen Kort).
Beth lives with her family in the Upper Midwest, and during the cold winter months, she dreams of snorkeling in the Riviera Maya.
Martina Frka Milotic
Guest Book Reviewer, Books & Blanket: Books, Blanket, Joy
During her Law studies, she turned to the media and permanently stuck in journalism—from Novi list, through Kanal Ri, Soundset Trsat, Index.hr to the lifestyle portal Extravagant.com.hr, she crossed a solid number of media thresholds and brought valuable experiences with her from each.
As a mother of a seven-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, she has been running the blog, “Mala Kme Conquers the World” for her whole career, with stories from family life and socially engaged topics.
In her free time, she reads, writes, reviews books, and invents stories.
Privately, Martina is a bookworm, a lover of fairy tales, myths and legends, nature, tights and, above all, her family.
As part of the Fragment publishing house, she published two books: Little Kme Conquers the World: Motherhood Without Filters (2019) and Storyteller (2021).
Krystina Quintana
Contributor
Krystina Quintana is a 30-year-old freelance writer living outside of Chicago, IL. With a passion for food and travel, she seeks to help businesses bring traffic to their page by writing blog posts that are engaging and fun to read. Reach out to her for blog posts and articles on Writers Work: https://writers.work/krystinaquintana.
Past Contributors
Ellen Acconcia
Contributor
Julie A. Dickson
Poetry Reader
Christy Howitt
Contributor
Katie Hudson
Contributor
India Rose Kushner
Contributor
Brooke Spivey
Contributor
Interested in Reading Submissions with Us?
Our submission pool has grown SUBSTANTIALLY in the past year, and it’s more than one or two people can handle alone (at least in a timely manner, which we want to stay sensitive to). We read every submission that comes in, in full, and anonymously to avoid bias. Our Editor-in-Chief personally responds to every submission that comes in with a little feedback (never purely form rejections or acceptances). And we review each piece with an eye for literary merit, message, how it represents marine life (if applicable), and how it fits into Lit Shark and speaks to our earlier issues.
If that sounds like your jam, we’d love to hear from you! Please email our EIC, McKenzie, with your interest.
Thank you! We look forward to hearing from you!
Interested in Contributing to Our Website?
We are looking for more contributors who can write regularly for Lit Shark in the following areas: marine life, marine biology, conservation, sustainability, green living, SHARK WEEK and other documentaries/docuseries, animal rescue, coral reef restoration, book reviews in a wide variety of genres, and more.
If any of these subjects are of interest to you, or if you have other ideas that you think might be a fit in the Lit Shark community, please read more here about how to contribute.
Thank you! We look forward to hearing from you!
Please note that these positions are volunteer roles at this time.
We are aware of the heart, intellect, effort, and time that go into this work, and we are not asking for volunteers lightly. We’re actively exploring new ways to fund Lit Shark and to grow our platform, so we can grow our community – team members, contributors, readers, and writers in our literary issues alike. Not to mention giving back to our larger community through donations to important conservation, sustainability, and animal advocacy efforts.
Thank you for your understanding and patience as we grow.