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
Assistant Poetry/Prose Editor & Contributor
Beth lives with her family in the Upper Midwest, and during the cold winter months, she dreams of snorkeling in the Riviera Maya.
Julie A. Dickson
Assistant Poetry/Prose Editor
Ellen Acconcia
Contributor
Ellen Acconcia is a marketing and communications professional, originally from New York City and currently living and working in coastal North Carolina by way of Washington, D.C. Mostly recently, she oversaw audience growth and engagement and content management for a nonprofit digital newsroom. She has served as a marketing director, publicist, and communications expert in industries as varied as book publishing, the performing arts, corporate development and professional association management. She is an experienced writer, content wrangler, publications production manager and creative director who can write to order. She enjoys breathing life into a vision through the written word.
Christy Howitt
Contributor
Christy Howitt is the young adult fiction author of Heartsand and Sunwild and the Founder of Calla Creative Studio – a writing agency that offers both copywriting services, writing mentorship, workshops and retreats. She writes an ongoing series on how to use intuition and creativity to illuminate your life.
Katie Hudson
Contributor
Katie is a travel and fiction writer from Tennessee, currently based out of the Appalachia region but soon traveling and living in Rome, Italy.
India Rose Kushner
Contributor
India Rose Kushner is a queer writer from New York City, who currently lives in Baltimore, MD. She graduated with a Communications/Journalism degree from Goucher College. She currently writes about health, wellness, and chronic illness at GoodRx, among other publications. Her work has been featured in the Corvus Review. When not writing, India is busy reading too many books at once. She currently lives with her dog, cat, and her husband.
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.
Interested in Being the Next Member of Our Team?
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!