"I can only answer the question 'What am I to do' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'" ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 1981


I am honored to find myself a part of the stories told in the more than a dozen books that have become Not Forgotten Publications.

After more than two decades as a production editor and copyeditor of professional and scholarly books and journals for traditional publishers, I was called upon by a series of individuals to help them bring their stories to life as print and electronic books:
  • A woman who wrote about the life of her first child and only daughter, who died from cystic fibrosis at age six
  • A woman who wrote about her first trip with her mother to a village in what was then Communist Yugoslavia
  • A woman whose father died in 2000, leaving his three children with a novel he longed to have published
  • A woman who wrote to process her grief after her husband died from a bicycling accident
  • A woman who wrote about her life as a nurse, farmer, daughter, wife, and mother for her sons and grandchildren
  • A woman who grew up in the Philippines, married an American Navy man she met in Turkey, and wrote about the power of faith, prayer, and grace in surviving the challenges and difficulties of her life
  • A woman who founded a prayer group for girls based on the life of Saint Rita of Cascia
  • A monastery of Dominican nuns who wanted to share the writings of the founder of their order
  • A Roman Catholic Deacon who founded a nonprofit organization that helps homeless people move into housing of their own
  • A woman whose life was transformed by forty days of prayer and fasting
  • A Mennonite woman who in her twenties became a missionary doctor, in her forties a wife and mother, in her fifties a psychiatrist, and in her seventies an author
  • A woman whose daughter is surviving stage 4 glioblastoma cancer
  • A woman whose Army-doctor father-in-law wrote hundreds of love letters to his wife from World War II Europe
  • A woman for whom a painting and a fantastical story became a tool for leading others out of mediocrity
The most powerful lesson I have learned in the process of being midwife for these authors and their books is that it's never just about the book.

It's about making a dream come true, for an individual, for a family.

It's about proving, to the authors and their readers, that I believe every life matters, that every story deserves to be told, told well, told beautifully.

It's about bringing a hidden story into the light.

It's about helping someone move forward.

And sometimes it's even about giving a person a reason to live.

It's also about becoming a member of the author's team, about being a servant by using the gifts given to me through the graces of nature and experience.

If you have a place for me on your team, whether for one dream or for many, please contact me here.

I look forward to hearing from you! 

~ Alice S. Morrow Rowan