Hi to our younger readers, writers, artists, shark lovers—and your parents/guardians/family/mentors! Thank you so much for supporting Lit Pup by being here. We’re so happy you’re here and are interested in working with us in this early part of your creative, publishing journey.

The Lit Shark and Lit Pup community is unique in that we are actively encouraging young writers and artists to submit their work to our community. Whether you are in your teens and think you might want to work in publishing someday, or if you’re five years old and just started getting into reading children’s stories, we want to hear from you. The beginning of your publishing journey can be scary and intimidating, but we want to make it as easy and welcoming for you as we can. Your publishing goals should never make you question your worth or your work’s worth, and we want you to remember that every step of the way.

Please read below for details about how to submit and where your work will appear. We can’t wait to read your work.

Where Your Work Will Appear

When you submit your work to Lit Shark or Lit Pup, it may also appear as a Creative Highlight on our website (under “The Feed” if you’d like to see past Creative Highlights!), and it will also be considered for our annual “Best Of” Anthology.

Each of our issues of Lit Shark and Lit Pup will be available on our website as beautifully-designed PDFs (our EIC previously worked as a book designer for years and loves to design beautiful books and publications) for free on our website. We will also offer e-book and physical editions of our issues for a small fee for readers who want hard copies or Kindle-friendly copies.

Our contributors will receive the free PDF of the issue, links to all the locations where their work appears, and also a free copy of the “Best Of” Anthology at the end of the year if their work is included.

How to Submit 

To submit your creative writing and art, please go to the following link and use the submission form. We will confirm right away that we have received your submission, and in 30 days, you’ll know the status of your publication (yes, whether or not it’s been accepted; there’ll be no ghosting here).

Thank you so much for considering Lit Shark and Lit Pup. We love supporting you and appreciate you trusting us with your creative work.

First Rights Agreement

Lit Shark and Lit Pup are primarily interested in works and artwork that have not been published elsewhere, but in special cases, we will republish work (as long as we can cite the previous source, of course!).

If you’d like to republish your work after working with Lit Shark and Lit Pup, we only ask that you cite us as the first publisher.

A Note About Compensation

To support you on your publishing journey, Lit Shark and Lit Pup will not charge submission fees, and there will always be a free edition of our issues available (via free PDF on our website). As writers ourselves, we appreciate how expensive our publishing journeys can be, and we don’t want to contribute to that.

That said, we unfortunately cannot compensate our writers and artists at this time. We’re a brand new publication with all of the expenses coming out of our personal pockets. However, being able to compensate our writers, artists, and team (including our regular contributors) is our first financial goal. As soon as we are able, we will update this section of our site, and we will begin compensating everyone for their work.