Our Origin Story

As a young child, I found it difficult to communicate with the people around me. It wasn’t until recently that I learned I wasn’t just shy but suffered from select mutism and social anxiety. When people tried to speak to me I wouldn’t speak out loud. Instead, I would whisper what I wanted to say in my mother’s ear and she would communicate for me. I finally found a way to share my voice in the third grade when our teacher started having us write stories. Finally, I could share what was inside me with the outside world and as I learned to read, was able to learn about the world at large.  Since then the sharing of stories has been a large part of my life and now I want to make it my life’s work.

The idea for Belton Cottage Publishing began in 2014 while taking a creative writing class at university. Each week, I read many amazing stories from my peers and was very disheartened to know that very few of them would ever get published.

My professor saw my passion to help my classmates and suggested that I consider teaching. (Oh, what a scary thought!) Instead, I started thinking about opening my own independent publishing company. After a lot of research and training in editing, design and (of course) publishing, Belton Cottage Publishing was born.