“I built this house with my life.” He gestured toward it. “Not that it was like this when I first arrived,” he said. “Like the rooms of my mind, the rooms of the house were not all that attractive. Some were dark and messy and the air in them was heavy. And, in this garden, mixed among the flowers and bushes were weeds I’d grown in life. It took a while to reconstruct,” he said, smiling at the memory. “I had to revise the image of it—the image of myself, that is—detail by detail. A section of wall here, a floor there, a doorway, a furnishing.”

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“With mind,” he said.

“That which you believe becomes your world.”

• Richard Matheson - What Dreams May Come

Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed she couldn’t be an author.

She didn’t grow up building book forts or reading by flashlight under the covers. Books didn’t sweep her away to magical places; they dropped her straight into Dante’s inferno, exposing every weakness, every vulnerability, and her deepest fear that she wasn’t smart enough.

My name is Liza, and I am the founder of Feather House Publishing. Before I could lift other voices, I had to find the courage to release my own...

(This isn’t your standard brief “About.” Skimmers, you’ve been warned, this is your exit point. For the curious, this is a story, so get comfy.)

It all began with a persistent idea that kept showing up, uninvited and unshakable. It didn’t care that I was a bibliophobic or that I tried to ignore it. It tugged at me anyway, whispering: Write.

For years, I ran from it, a fear-fueled, never-ending NYC marathon with no finish line. I hit every pothole, slipped on every rotten banana peel, and dodged every orange cone you can imagine. (It was, indeed, a divine comedy.)

Then, to make this game of Frogger even more interesting, an abundance of uncanny coincidences (synchronicities as I later came to call them) started to appear. I was now officially on the “WTF is happening?!” level of the game, and on that level you’re instantly bumped up to max confusion. Eventually, there were too many signs to ignore, and when it became undeniable that something far bigger than my understanding was at play, I stopped running.

I finally surrendered to the signs and tugs and gave them my undivided attention. When I did, magic manifested into my mundane muggle world. I felt a joy I had never known, a love that was purely mine, a connection to something greater, and my life began to change.

I wrote several stories, and with each one, I grew in ways I never expected. I self-published them, held the finished books in my hands, threw release parties, and signed copies for strangers. Technically, I was now an author. Mission accomplished, right? The signs had pointed me here, I had listened, I had done it. Yet little did I know, this was only the beginning of what this path would teach me.

Deep down, there was still so much resistance to everything that came with being an author. Every step seemed to trigger my deepest fears. I was terrified of being seen, petrified to read in front of people, convinced I was a fraud, and half-expecting the Pulitzer Prize police to show up and haul me away for authoring without a license and literary trespassing.

Over time, I began to resent the very signs that had once felt like divine breadcrumbs, convinced they had led me in circles to nothing but dead ends. With every negative thought, I was stitching myself into a straitjacket made from the stiff, unbreathable fabric of doubt. And every year I chose to believe my fears instead of my truth, the fit grew tighter. Soon, it wasn’t just holding me back, it was suffocating the storyteller in me until she was completely gone.

I believe living in fear and away from your truth is the cause of so much unhappiness. Yet even knowing this, I still chose fear. I walked away from the books I had written for five years and those were some of the most magicless, unhappiest years of my life. But when something is truly meant for you, it will always find its way back to you.

On the tenth year of this journey I thought I had left behind, the synchronicities started to reappear. I promised myself I would try one more time, but this time I would give it my all. Truly. So I did something I had never done before: I asked for help (not from a padded room, though I questioned my sanity more than once).

With support, I realized the stories I had written could never truly take flight until I was brave enough to rewrite my own story. It was the story that needed the most editing. I had to flip every word I once believed about myself.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t linear. It was the NYC marathon all over again, only this time, it was faith-fueled with kind spectators handing me cups of water while “Eye of the Tiger” blared from every corner, encouraging me to keep going. (Yes, it was still a divine comedy ;) And with each mile, each small act of courage, the straitjacket of doubt began to loosen, buckle by buckle.

I then realized that if I had the power to create something that trapped me for years, I also had the power to create something that could set me free:

A magical quill, bold enough to write new stories and create new worlds.

A quill that could reach children who felt unsure of themselves and afraid of books, just as I once did. But the first child I had to use that magical quill on was the little girl who feared she wasn’t smart enough, who lacked the courage to use her voice, who was afraid of being seen, and who never felt she fit in at any table. That’s when she and I agreed to work together to build our own table, with chairs for those who might feel the way we once did.

Together, we created a publishing house, one that would guide others who, like us, once questioned whether their voice truly mattered.

Feather House Publishing was built for the brave outliers. For those who didn’t come from literary backgrounds, who don’t always feel like “real writers,” but who carry stories that matter. This is a safe space to write honestly, publish boldly, and remember that you are not crazy for wanting to share your heART. You are called to.

Here, we don’t just publish books. We mentor emerging authors to trust their words and own their voices. We guide them through the fog of self-doubt into the clarity of confidence because the world doesn’t need perfect writers. It needs real ones.

And we believe, without a doubt, that your story has wings. Every story that will not let go is a story that is ready to fly. It might only need one more feather to be set free.

Welcome to Feather House.