Imagine a Door: A Writer's Guide to Unlocking Your Story, Choosing a Publishing Path, and Honoring the Creative Journey

CRAFT CATEGORY WINNER, THE MEMOIR PRIZE 2025

SILVER NAUTILUS AWARD, Creativity and Innovation Category 2025

TWO SILVER AWARDS, 2025 Foreword INDIES, in Career and Reference

If you want to get your manuscript published, read this book. 

There's no secret handshake or golden key in these pages, but Imagine a Door offers a more equitable and empowering prize: information delivered with gentleness. Author and publisher Laura Stanfill started working on this project in 2016, ultimately interviewing more than seventy-five authors and industry experts, including Wendy Chin-Tanner, Tove Danovich, Omar El Akkad, Erin Harris, Ari Honarvar, Juhea Kim, Dan Lazar, Fonda Lee, Emme Lund, Daniel A. Olivas, Rosanne Parry, Keith Rosson, Amy Stewart, Sonja Thomas, Addie Tsai, and Lidia Yuknavitch. 

Is a writing routine worthwhile? How do you pinpoint the why behind your storytelling? What exactly is distribution? Can we reframe success in a less capitalistic way than defining it by sales numbers? While prioritizing genuine community over platform building, Imagine a Door intersperses case studies, sidebars, and checklists with personal stories about writing, revising, and the emotional complexities of sending your work into the world. Foreword by Beth Kephart, author of Handling the Truth.

Laura Stanfill is the award-winning publisher of Forest Avenue Press and the author of the historical novel Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary. She's a graduate of Vassar College and the Yale Publishing Course, which she attended thanks to a scholarship from the Independent Book Publishers Association. She lives in Portland, Oregon.