NGL Press · Founding Authors

The Authors Who Started It All.

Every NGL Press collection began with one author who wrote the library they could not find. Meet the voices behind the books.

Founding Author

Maisel McLaula

The rhyme weaver behind every NGL collection. Brain science with a wink, big feelings with a hand to hold, and 570 picture books waiting to find the children who need them.

Anyone. Any Age. Any Beginning.

The greatest authors in history started exactly where you are. Some were rejected. Some were teenagers. Some were grandparents. All of them just kept writing.

Anne Frank

@ 13

started writing her now-iconic diary at age 13, hiding from war.

Mary Shelley

@ 18

wrote Frankenstein at just 18, on a rainy summer dare.

S.E. Hinton

@ 15

wrote The Outsiders at 15. It is still on every middle-school shelf.

Maya Angelou

@ 41

spoke not a word for 5 years as a child. Published her first memoir at 41.

Toni Morrison

@ 39

published her first novel at 39, while working full time and raising two kids.

Frank McCourt

@ 66

published Angela’s Ashes at 66 and won the Pulitzer the next year.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

@ 65

wrote her first Little House book at 65, after a lifetime of homesteading.

Beatrix Potter

@ 36

was rejected by six publishers, so she self-published Peter Rabbit. The rest is history.

Dr. Seuss

@ rejected 27 times

was rejected by 27 publishers before his first book ever saw a shelf.

Madeleine L'Engle

@ rejected 26 times

sent A Wrinkle In Time to 26 publishers. Newbery Medal followed.

J.K. Rowling

@ rejected 12 times

wrote Harry Potter as a single mom on benefits. Twelve rejections later, it was published.

Frederick Douglass

@ self-taught

was born enslaved, secretly learned to read, and went on to write three autobiographies.

Looking to publish with NGL Press?

If you write picture books for every reader with a developmental, neurological, or educational angle, the Emerging Authors program is for you. Applications reviewed monthly.

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