Wrestling with a Rebel
When Your Son Flips Your World Upside Down
Kickstarter funded!
Memoir sells. Shake Ridge Press is proof.
Together, we reached our $15,000 goal with three days to go. Shake Ridge Press is no longer a dream, but a reality. Thank you for believing memoir makes a difference.
Rewards start at $10, from memoir-writing advice and first-edition ebooks to limited coaching and the one-of-one Publisher’s Prize.
Backing an underdog can be simple.
Kickstarter is a website where people help fund a new project directly. For Shake Ridge Press, your pledge helps launch our first four books. You can choose a reward, much like a preorder or thank-you gift, or pledge without choosing one.
Our $15,000 goal has been reached. Kickstarter charges cards at the end of a successful campaign, not when you make your pledge.
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Pick a reward that feels right, or make a pledge without a reward. Rewards begin at $10.
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Real stories. Real people. A publisher you can trust.
Shake Ridge Press is a small but fierce publishing house specializing in memoir and narrative nonfiction in a variety of forms.
Every great memoir begins with a shake.
The ridge is what you stand on afterward.
Deep in an old-growth forest along the Pacific Crest, Shake Ridge Press was born from a real place and a clear conviction: extraordinary life stories deserve a publisher willing to see their potential. We publish the stories traditional houses overlook—and develop them with the rigor, care, and storytelling instinct they deserve.
Three real stories. One beginning.
The inaugural Shake Ridge Press list launches October 1, 2026, spanning family, faith, service, leadership, and transformation.
The Armored Heart
How a Green Beret Learned to Lead with Love—and a Shoelace
Finding Father
A Magical Quest of Faith, Hope, and Autism
How to Write a Memoir That Works
The 12 elements of a memoir readers can’t put down, plus Susy Flory’s field-tested checklist, timeline templates, and story mapping tools.
Practical guidance from a New York Times bestselling memoirist who writes, publishes, teaches, and mentors memoir.
Explore the guideA memoir press built by a memoirist.
“I know what it takes to find the heart of a true story — and to help it earn a reader.”
For more than two decades I’ve written memoir — twenty books, editions in more than fifteen languages, one of them now a documentary, and one a feature film. I’ve watched true stories climb bestseller lists and change the people who read them. And I’ve watched the industry tell writer after writer that their story is too small, too quiet, too unsellable.
I named the press after the Pacific Crest, the kind of place where people live close to the bone and every single person has a story worth keeping. That is who we publish for: the memoirist, the first-time author, the voice that doesn’t fit a category. Small house, fierce intentions, and a belief that the underdog story is the one worth betting on.
Memoir done right doesn’t just get published. It gets read.
Learn what Shake Ridge Press publishes, how we approach story development, and when future submission windows will be announced.