Readers don’t often have a reason to read the copyright page of their favorite fiction novel. But beginning in 2026, if you crack open a book published by Roan & Weatherford Publishing, that copyright page has three extra words that are kind of a big deal: Roan & Weatherford Publishing Associates, Bentonville, Arkansas, and Heber City, Utah. Joining a robust writing and publishing presence in Utah, Roan & Weatherford opened a satellite office in Heber City with Lindsay Flanagan, a Heber City native, at the helm.
The Small Town Girl
There’s a favorite fictional trope many of us have read before: A small town girl dreams of getting out of her hometown and making her way in the big, wide world, never to return. Tragedy strikes, and she’s forced back to her hometown, where, eventually, she learns valuable life lessons and appreciates the town that raised her. Fiction isn’t always aligned with real life, but that’s almost the story of Lindsay Flanagan.
Lindsay grew up a Clyde, part of one of Heber City’s founding families, raised on stories of her grandfather and father riding into the mountains to run cattle like “Wild West” cowboys. But she dreamed of seeing the world and becoming a writer. At eighteen, she left Heber—never planning to return. She stayed close, attending college in Utah County, yet it felt far from her mountain home. After marrying her husband, Shawn Flanagan, she planned to pursue a PhD at Penn State to become a literary professor. Instead, life led her to a Master’s in Creative Writing at Utah Valley University, where she realized fiction and beautiful prose had always been her true love.
While working for Eschler Editing, a Utah-based editing firm, Lindsay’s father was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a terminal diagnosis. Her plan to never return to Heber melted away, and Lindsay, Shawn, and their two young girls moved back to the mountains, and to have four more years with her dad.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to leave Heber to be a writer. After her dad’s passing, her family stayed, and in 2020, Lindsay signed on with a literary agent who led her to Roan & Weatherford Publishing and its founder, Casey Cowan.
The Western-at-Heart Boy
Casey Cowan knew he wanted to be a writer from the moment his parents put a Hardy Boys book in his hands at age seven. Unfortunately, they also told him to stop dreaming and “go do something real—you’re never going to get published.” Fiction became something he did in the closet, shared with no one until he began dating his now-wife, Amy, a romance writer, who took him to the Northwest Arkansas Writers’ Workshop. Founded in the 1980s and run by legendary Western author Dusty Richards and his writing partner, Velda Brotherton, it became the place where Casey found a supportive community and learned the craft of writing.
He also learned more about the business of publishing, including what wasn’t working in the industry—particularly for talented but “small-name” authors. The life of a real author didn’t look like the Hollywood Stephen King version. Most authors saw very little support. In the workshop, Casey, a voracious reader all his life, sat alongside some of the best writers he’d ever encountered, yet they struggled to find the resources needed to get their books into the world.
Joining with other members of the workshop, Casey formed a group to solve those problems and lift up other authors. What began as a marketing group—helping with branding, editing, and cover design—quickly grew into a publishing company. One of their first authors was Dusty Richards from the workshop, and Western historical novels became their bread-and-butter genre. As they grew, they added new imprints, remained as author-centric as possible, and became what Casey proudly called a “scrappy community alternative” to the larger New York publishing houses: small-town in spirit, but an international press.
The Professional Meet-Cute
Roan & Weatherford Publishing took on Lindsay’s debut novel, Anna Grey and the Constellation, a middle-grade fantasy about a girl and her horse, and invited Lindsay to attend an author-publisher retreat in Arkansas. At the retreat, in an overwhelmingly personal approach to publishing, not typical for the industry, Lindsay met Casey, the president of Roan & Weatherford.
Upon hearing that Lindsay was an editor at Eschler Editing, he invited her to edit for Roan & Weatherford. She declined, but Casey didn’t give up. The next time he saw her in person, he tweaked his offer: What about being a publisher instead?
This time, Lindsay said yes. She partnered with her fellow Eschler Editing editor, Sabine Berlin, as co-publisher, and together they took on the young adult imprint Mad Cat, along with Radiance, which focuses on romance and women-centric fiction.
The Hometown and the Western Roots
Bringing on Lindsay and Sabine made the company’s growth–and its ability to expand enough to open the satellite office in Heber–possible. “Lindsay and Sabine are willing to take the bull by the horns and actually go out and do their part of ownership in running the business,” Casey said, which gives him the ability to turn his attention to other parts of the business, leaving their work in their capable hands.
With Lindsay as a partner and Vice President, and the Utah team growing, it made sense to open a satellite office in Heber City. Announced in January 2026, the Heber City office currently includes Lindsay, Sabine, and Janay Thornton as publisher for Dragonbrae, the science fiction and fantasy imprint, and two members of their marketing team, Alan Smith and Staci Gonzalez. The Heber team will launch a YouTube channel this spring, called West of the Page, where they’ll share the stories behind the stories they publish.
Lindsay stands a bit in awe of her story, which is almost like fiction. She’s now been back in Heber for a decade. “I’m kind of going back to my Western upbringing, and I’m with this publisher who has Western roots as well. . . I really feel like it almost couldn’t have happened in a better way.”
In April, Roan & Weatherford will publish two Western anthologies Lindsay worked on. Rough Country and Hard Country each feature twelve New York Times bestselling authors, with proceeds from Rough Country benefiting the U.S. Marshals Survivors Benefit Fund. Hard Country is especially personal to Lindsay, as proceeds will support the Heber City–based Horse of Many Colors Cancer Foundation, which helped her father during his battle with cancer. “I wanted to honor what they’re doing—honor my dad, honor my childhood—and also… tell some good stories.”
She’s proud to tell people that Roan & Weatherford’s satellite office is in her hometown. “This is going to sound super sappy, but I didn’t think my dreams could come true in this town, and all of a sudden, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. They’re here. I’m making them in my little town.’”