Happy Friday, readers, writers, and shark fans!

To those who celebrate, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving! And if you’re like us and doing something this weekend instead, we hope you have a wonderful time.

With Thanksgiving also comes historically the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, which now also includes Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. Though we don’t have a LOT of deals to offer, we have a few holiday specials, and we hope you’ll consider an issue of Lit Shark Magazine or one of our Poem of the Month series broadsides as a possible stocking stuffer this year!

Explore Our Paperback Editions

We believe at Lit Shark that all literature should be accessible to everyone, no matter their financial circumstances, and so we always provide free PDFs of each of our issues, in a one-page spread that’s great for e-readers and a two-page spread that’s great for someone who wants an experience that’s more reflective of reading a physical book.

However, we also have a huge soft spot for physical books and want our books to be accessible in that form, as well, so we have paperback editions of each issue of Lit Shark Magazine, as well as our Best Of 2023 Anthology (and soon, our Best Of 2024 Anthology, which is almost through its curation and will next be designed), on Amazon.

Each issue of Lit Shark Magazine is carefully curated and consists of between 180 and 250 pages of poetry, fiction, short nonfiction, and occasional art and photography, centered around the issue’s theme and always celebrating nature, marine life, and identity. After curation, our issues are always carefully ordered to offer an enjoyable and readable flow, reflective of the issue’s larger themes. Finally, each issue is thoughtfully designed, inside and out, with a look that is becoming distinctly “Lit Shark,” and colors that are vibrant and interesting, and the spines of each issue, when placed next to each other, add another piece to the puzzle of a larger image, perfect for any fan of displayed books.

While we have published several “general theme issues” of Lit Shark Magazine (Issues 1, 4, and 5), we also have a yearly SHARK WEEK Edition (Issues 2 and 8) to discuss conservation and other important marine subjects, and a Spooky (TEETH) Edition to celebrate Halloween and to enjoy the spooky tropes that often involve sharks and other creatures of the deep (Issues 3 and 7). At the end of each year, we revisit our four issues from the year and select the top 50 pieces we published, and each of those 50 writers is invited to submit a new piece. The 50 selected pieces, the 50 new pieces, and all of our Winners and Honorable Mentions from our Poem of the Month contest from the year appear in our Best Of Anthologies (so far, we have Best Of 2023, and Best Of 2024 is coming on December 16th in time to order for Christmas).

If you’re interested in reading our issues and collecting physical copies, you can check out our Amazon page here for all of our magazine titles.

All the Puzzle Pieces Are Coming Together!

If you have been wondering what we’ve been going on about when we say that there’s an image coming together on the spines of the issues of Lit Shark Magazine…

Regular contributor Rie Sheridan Rose sent me a selfie from her most recent purchase, this time of Issue 7 of Lit Shark Magazine: The Spooky (TEETH) Edition, I was so pleased!! You can even see her collection of Lit Shark Magazine issues on the bookshelf behind her (the white covers) with the image gradually being spelled out on the spines of the issues (I wonder what it will be?!). She also has the paperback and hardback editions of last year’s Best Of 2023 Anthology, which shows part of a great white shark’s torso on the spine (it’s a gorgeous wrap-around image).

If you’re interested in puzzling together your own book spine image, check out our Amazon page here.

Make Your Poetry Collection More Visual with Broadsides

Last year, we started our Poem of the Month contest as a way to further celebrate poetry and the often imagistic and visceral nature of the form through the creation of broadsides.

Each month, we accept submissions and select one winner of the Poem of the Month contest, as well as at least one Honorable Mention. These pieces appear in the next issue of Lit Shark Magazine and are automatically included in the year’s Best Of Anthology. Our favorite part of this each month is sharing the winning poem with our community and creating a custom, unique, and entirely original broadside that is reflective of the content of the poem (you can see our latest in the image to the left, Doug Van Hooser’s “Variations On ‘Joy is Not Made to Be a Crumb,'” written after Mary Oliver).

If you’re interested in perusing our past winners, you can look at our full archive of Poem of the Month Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Broadsides on our archive page, and if you would like to support Lit Shark and purchase one, they are available in the Lit Shark Shop for $7 each.

Holiday Special!! 🎵 Have Yourself… Your Own Poetry Broadside 🎵

Since starting our Poem of the Month contest, we’ve received so many kind comments about our broadsides and wanted to do something special this holiday season: to make broadsides accessible to those beyond the contest.

Maybe you didn’t win the contest, or maybe you don’t like participating in contests. Maybe you want a broadside you can frame of a famous poem that you love. Maybe you want to give a visual poem as a gift!

For $15, you can submit one poem (30 lines or less, please), and we will create a digital broadside that is optimized for printing. 

We create high-quality and crisp images and optimize our files for printing that you can do at home, or you could go to a public printer and print on cardstock; our previous broadsides are performing beautifully. Then you’re ready to display your broadside, frame it, whatever you like! You could even print it in a smaller size and make a homemade ornament!

Interested? Email mckenzie@litshark.com , subject: Poetry Broadside

DEADLINE: We might open this up long-term, but for now, we’re offering it as a holiday special. Please contact us with your interest by or before Friday, December 20, 2024.

Holiday Special!! Receive In-Depth Feedback from Lit Shark

Sometimes after spending a lot of time with a piece, you need someone to tell you what’s working and what could still be elevated and fine-tuned. With more than 15 years of editing experience, 9 years in the classroom, and over 20 years of shifting through literary magazine submissions, we’ve got you covered.

For $20, a writer can submit up to 3 poems (or 6 pages) or 1 story (10 pages) and receive the following:

          1. Thorough line-editing checking grammar, punctuation, stylistics, and plot concerns;

          2. A reader’s reaction to the piece: what the reader likes, what the reader questions, etc.;

          3. A two-page workshop-style deep dive discussion of your piece, your writing style, what’s working in the piece, what changes would give the piece that extra sparkle, and  few suggestions of where to submit.

Interested? Email mckenzie@litshark.com , subject: Lit Shark Feedback

DEADLINE: We might open this up long-term, but for now, we’re offering it as a holiday special. Please contact us with your interest by or before Sunday, December 15, 2024.

Thank You for Supporting Lit Shark!

If you’re not in a position to support us financially this year, we totally understand and are so grateful that you’re here. Some other ways that you can support Lit Shark (and any small business out there!) are to share our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, website), to read our free PDFs of our magazine issues, and to leave reviews on Amazon. Perhaps most important of all, we rely on submissions to continue doing what we do. If you’d like to submit for our 2025 issues, we are already accepting submissions (our publishing calendar isn’t up-to-date yet, but we’ll have that finalized during the first week of December!). 

Running a literary magazine is a lot of work, and we’re so grateful for the many ways that you support us. Thank you for all that you do; may your shopping be cherry and calm; and happiest of happy holidays!