Write Where We Belong Press is an independent Canadian literary and arts organization and publishing house founded in 2023 and directed by Editor in Chief Mary Simmerling — philosopher, poet, Adlerian practitioner, and survivor.
The Press was created as a feminist act of resistance — to unsilence women's and other marginalized voices, to publish survivor-centered and social justice-driven work, and to challenge the systems that have — for far too long — determined whose stories are worthy of being heard.
We curate, produce, edit, and publish poetry, prose, and anthologies that center truth-telling, creative recovery, and the power of art to create space to bear witness. Our authors write from lived experience, bringing forward work that transforms personal and collective experience into meaning, healing, and hope, foregrounding language as art.
Write Where We Belong Press is grounded in integrity, compassion, and the conviction that art and ethics belong to the same conversation.
The Press collaborates with The Wrong Questions Project's art installation exhibits, extending the shared commitment to art as a form of witness, resistance, and repair.
Writing on the axes of trauma, meaning-making, and reclamation.
Tracing familial and generational geographies — the inherited landscapes of memory, silence, and survival.
Honouring the lived experience of grief and loss, and exploring what so often feels unbearable.
Practicing witness that refuses turning away.
Writing as a spiritual practice — an act of creation, attention, and restoration.
Grounded in ethics, justice, and belonging.
Resisting erasure — of people, of stories, and of truth itself.
At the heart of Write Where We Belong Press is the understanding that writing is not performance, but practice — a discipline of truth-telling and connection.
We are Adlerian at our core. We believe in the creative power of the self — that we are not defined by what happened to us, and that we alone decide the meaning of our experiences. When we write, we do not relive our stories; we reclaim them, transforming what was imposed on us into narratives of our own making — defined not by violence, but by resilience, agency, and transformation.
We believe that healing is never a solitary process. In the spirit of Gemeinschaftsgefühl — Adler's community feeling — we hold that our health and our healing reside in our relationships and in our sense of belonging. When we write together, and when we offer our words to one another, we disrupt the silence and isolation that harm imposes, and we make meaning of what once felt unspeakable.
And we believe in social interest — that individual healing and collective well-being are indivisible. The stories we publish do not end with the writer; they ripple outward, fostering empathy, solidarity, and systemic change. The future is not dictated by the past. Together, we write new meanings into existence.
This is the work of bearing witness — and it is the foundation of Write Where We Belong Press.
Making Space for the Light: Documenting the Violence that Shapes the Lives of Women and Girls (2026) ISBN 978-1997737070
We've Got Some Things to Say: Reshaping Narratives Around Sexual Violence (2024; Second Edition Forthcoming 2027)
We've Been Put Through Fire and Come Out Divine: Stories of Hope & Survival (2024; Second Edition Forthcoming 2027)
Retracing the Silence: Poems from My Body (forthcoming, 2026), Mary Simmerling
Meditations on Freedom: A Tuesday Circle Anthology (forthcoming, 2026) ISBN 978-1997737193
Steppingstones (2026), Margaret Kogan ISBN 978-1997737186
No Witnesses: Meditations on Survival and Loss (2026), Margaret Kogan ISBN 978-1997737094
Meditations on Life: A Tuesday Circle Anthology (2025) ISBN 978-1997737018
Sometimes, in the Afterwards: Meditations on Loss (2025) ISBN 978-1068828508
My Concern: A Poetic Memoir: Poems About Trauma (2025), Micky Shorr ISBN 978-1068828591
Motherland (2025), Margaret Kogan ISBN 978-1997737032
What the Current Cannot Swallow (2025), Debra Hall ISBN 978-1997737056
MARY WAS HERE: an effigy of sorts (2024), Mary Simmerling ISBN 978-1068828522
The Architecture of Impunity: A Forensic Audit of Modern Predation (2026), Mary Simmerling ISBN 978-1997737117
In Plain Sight: How the Epistemology of Ignorance Normalizes Gender-Based Violence (2025), Mary Simmerling ISBN 978-1068828560
Writing Through Recovery: Leveraging Clinical Tools for Narrative Justice (Forthcoming), Mary Simmerling
Choosing to be Harmed: Autonomy and its Limits in Living Organ Donor Transplantation (2026), Mary Simmerling ISBN 978-1997737162
Each publication is approached as a collaboration — a dialogue between writer, editor, and reader. The process is deliberate and deeply respectful of voice, form, and truth.
We do not separate art from ethics, or craft from conscience. The act of creation is also an act of restoration — of connection, belonging, and hope.
We stand with those who write through pain, silence, and survival — not to explain, but to claim. Not to soften what happened, but to name it.
We believe that writing can heal, transform, and resist. We publish work that gives voice to the silenced, allows for meaning-making where false narratives have been foisted upon us, and holds space for truth in all its forms.
Through writing, we bear witness to both the wounds and the wonders of being human. We believe that every story, when spoken in truth, belongs.
