Editors & Contributors

Every book we publish carries fifty accounts of someone's hardest months. It matters that readers know who assembles them, what is changed, and what is not. This page describes the people behind the press and how the work is done.

The editors

Healing Stories Network is edited and published by a small team of editors who, like our clinical contributors, work anonymously. None of the editors is a clinician, and nothing on this site is written or presented as clinical expertise; readers should treat it accordingly.

The press grew out of an editor's own experience of chronic illness, and of looking for a long, honest account by someone who had already been there, including the parts that did not resolve neatly. Clinical pages described the condition without describing the life. Forum threads were fragmentary and hard to trust. So the editors began collecting the accounts themselves.

The editors invite and correspond with contributors, choose which accounts go into each volume, and do the line editing. They do not write in a contributor's voice, and they do not add outcomes a contributor did not describe.

Contact: support@healingstoriesnetwork.com

Contributing writers on health information

The short topic introduction that opens each volume, and any general health-information passage elsewhere on this site, is written and checked by healthcare professionals who contribute anonymously. They ask not to be named because they write outside their institutions and do not wish their employers implicated in a commercial project. We would rather tell you that plainly than imply a level of authority we cannot evidence.

What this means in practice: introductions are checked for factual accuracy and for language that could be mistaken for guidance. They are deliberately brief. They exist to frame the testimonies, not to instruct. No part of any volume, introduction included, is a substitute for the judgement of a clinician who knows your case.

The contributors themselves

The people whose accounts fill these books are the actual authorities in them. Each account is written or dictated by the person who lived it, who approves the final text before publication. Contributors choose how they are credited, including anonymously, and can withdraw before a volume goes to press. Identifying details — hospitals, clinicians, family members — are handled with care and are removed or blurred where a contributor asks.

Editing is limited to clarity, grammar and length. We do not smooth an account into a recovery arc, and every volume carries a section given over to outcomes that were partial, disappointing or unresolved. A collection where everyone gets better would be a worse book and a dishonest one.

Medical review

Because our clinical contributors are not named, we do not describe any book or article as medically reviewed. We think readers should know that, rather than discover it.

Corrections

If you find an error of fact anywhere on this site or in a volume you have bought, write to support@healingstoriesnetwork.com and tell us where it is. We correct errors in the digital files and reissue them to everyone who has bought that title, at no cost. Corrections to health-information passages are treated as urgent.

Read further

Editorial Standards sets out the sourcing, consent and editing rules in full. The Medical Disclaimer states the limits of everything published here. Share Your Story explains how to contribute an account of your own.