Happy Monday, readers, writers, and shark fans! Today is an incredibly special day in the Lit Shark Community, because Issue 2: The SHARK WEEK Edition is finally here! We’re so excited to share Issue 2, complete with 150 pages of poetry and fiction, as well as a thoughtful Foreword by none other than Paul Gasek, Shark Week’s Executive Producer in years 2016 through 2018. It was such an honor to work with him, and it’s so heartening to know that he appreciates what we’re doing.

Welcome to Issue 2: The SHARK WEEK Edition!

A Special Thank You to Our Contributors and All Who Submitted!

Available to All Readers, Writers, and Shark Fans

We believe literature of all kinds should be accessible to everyone, no matter their financial situations, educational affiliations, etc. So we’re offering each of our issues as a free PDF that you can download and read. You can then read it on your phone, computer, or e-Reader, or you could even print out a copy!

Choose Your Edition

Depending on your preferences, we’re offering two-page spread and one-page spread editions. The two-page spread will feel more like a book with facing pages. The one-page spread will display one page at a time, which may be friendlier for those who want to read on an e-Reader (though I prefer the book-like feeling of the two-page spread, and it’s been okay to read on my Kindle Paperwhite; the display is simply smaller!).

Paperback Edition On the Way

We will also be offering a paperback edition via Amazon, which will be available this week for purchase. It will contain the same content, but we wanted to offer this for those of you (like me) who enjoy reading physical copies, need more time physically away from screens, or want to financially support Lit Shark’s future. The cover will be a beautiful matte, and the spine of each issue, when you place them next to each other, will create a surprise image. We can’t wait for a few issues down the road when the puzzle starts to be revealed!

Thank You.

Thank you to all of you for the incredible support and excitement you’ve shown to our new little publication. We’re polishing Issue 3 to release for Halloween tomorrow, so it’s going to be a busy week for us over at Lit Shark! But we felt we had a unique opportunity to release Issue 2: The SHARK WEEK Edition and Issue 3: The Spooky (TEETH) Edition together in the same week to encourage people to let go of the stigmas they have around sharks. While campy horror is fun to watch, and we enjoy watching Jaws and Sharknado as much as the next horror lover, we understand that these are works of fiction that are meant as entertainment; they are not meant to be viewed as fact or fuel for hatred against these should-be-treasured animals. So this week is all about entertainment: the factual and thoughtful and sometimes naturally gruesome elements of SHARK WEEK, followed by the much bloodier, cringey, still fun-to-consume horror, spooky poems, and ghost stories we love to enjoy around Halloween. We hope you’ll enjoy this week as much as we expect to. 

As the year comes to a close, we’re starting to look back on all that we’ve accomplished this year, while still working on Issue 4 (still open to submissions!), each month’s paid Poem of the Month Contest (still open for submissions!), and starting to put together this year’s Lit Shark “Best Of” Anthology and Best of the Net nominations. If you’ve submitted, thank you; and if you haven’t, we welcome you to start submitting as soon as you are ready. 

We greatly hope that you enjoy this second issue and can feel the passion come through the pages, not just from our wonderful contributors, but from our EIC and the tremendous love she felt for every piece that passed through her inbox, especially those she eventually curated. We can’t wait to continue on this journey with you. Thank you so much for being here.