I am an award-winning producer, author, and member of the Producers Guild of America. One of my fondest memories as a child is coming home from a weekend at my oma’s house to find that my mother had redecorated my room. The bedspread was pink, red, and white and so were the curtains but the main event was the fluffy white pouf of a rug on the floor. Home is a place that has always been important to me, which is why these books have found their way into my library.
I wrote...
Branding + Interior Design: Visibility and Business Strategy for Interior Designers
I had been producing television and covering interior design and real estate for national newspapers and television when I sat down to write a short e-book about branding for designers. That turned into Branding + Interior Design, a playbook for next-gen (and this has nothing to do with age!) design leaders. This book bridges the gap between interior designer and leader and shows pros how to define, value; communicate their vision; find clients who are a fit; and master the art of being visible. Hint: it has nothing to do with getting press although we cover that too.
The book also includes candid conversations with design luminaries like: Barbara Barry, Clodagh, Kelly Hoppen, Vicente Wolf, Christiane Lemieux, and Martyn Lawrence Bullard, among others.
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Corey Damen Jenkins, whose bold take on traditional interiors have won him a devoted following.
The designer, author, and television personality founded his firm during the 2008 recession and knocked on 779 doors in affluent neighborhoods around Detroit to do it. His patience and persistence are evident in his personal and stunning look at classic interiors; homes that have been reimagined for living now.
With sidebars on practical questions like how to hang a salon-style picture wall, and choosing the right window treatment, Corey is as generous with his advice as he is sharing his talent.
Corey Damen Jenkins s bold interiors have won a devoted following. In his first book, he presents his take on classic interiors that have been beautifully reimagined for today s taste, sharing the building blocks of this fun, vibrant traditional look. Bold Standard is about how to use colour in unexpected ways. Good Bones showcases architectural details. Less Is More focuses on creating a minimal look within a traditional interior. Eclectic Exuberance celebrates a collected appeal. Night and Day is a new look at the classic, graphic pairing of dark and light colours. Haute House looks at accessorizing with fashion-inspired…
I used to fancy myself as having a green thumb, until I planted my first outdoor garden.
These days I’m back inside with Hilton Carter’s Living Wild. Based in Baltimore, Carter is a director, editor, and fine artist with an encyclopedic knowledge about plants and how to style them. He’s also the dad to 250 plants including a fiddle-leaf named Frank.
In this, his fourth book, Living Wild, he talks about everything that is needed to design a “living home” and walks the reader through rooms he’s styled and his process. Check out his Instagram for a Living Wild playlist.
In Living Wild, bestselling plant stylist, author, designer and family man Hilton Carter explores multiple ways to style your home with plants - and cultivate happiness along the way.
The therapeutic benefits of living with and tending plants are well known - they offer a connection to the natural world that nurtures our mental and physical health. In this, his latest book, Hilton shows how to create a lush, stylish space with flourishing plants that bring life to your home and promote a happy and contented mindset. He discusses interior design choices - choosing the right colour scheme, textures and…
Images are powerful and, in our home, I am intentional about choosing art created by people who look like my son and me. When I discovered Black Artists Shaping The World, written by award-winning children’s author Sharna Jackson, I was thrilled.
Jackson was co-curator of the groundbreaking exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” and this book showcases twenty-six contemporary artists from Africa and the African diaspora, working in everything from painting, sculpture, and drawing to ceramics, installation art, and sound art.
My own favorites include the work of Kehinde Wiley, portraitist to Barack Obama, and Kenyan-British ceramicist Magdalene Odundo.
Written by award-winning Black British children's author Sharna Jackson, Black Artists Shaping the World celebrates the diversity of work being produced today by Black artists from around the globe, introducing young readers to twenty-six contemporary artists from Africa and of the African diaspora.
Sharna Jackson's experience as a children's author who has worked for over a decade in the cultural sector, both at Tate in London and at Site Gallery in Sheffield, is combined here with the curatorial expertise of Dr Zoe Whitley, Director of London's Chisenhale Gallery and co-curator of the landmark Tate exhibition 'Soul of a Nation: Art…
Nikki Boyd first started growing her audience on Youtube sharing beautiful images and advice for creating a welcoming, and well-organized home.
Based in Charleston, Boyd is a professional organizer who started organizing as a hobby and built her audience several years before mainstream design magazines recognized her talent. Even if you can’t get it together and organize your own house, looking at the images of her home and the homes of the clients she organizes is a whole lot of zen.
"Professional organizer Nikki Boyd has a gift of transforming a space into a captivating work of art. She sprinkles a little bit of glam and a whole lot of functionality into every space she touches." -Toni Hammersley, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Author of The Complete Book of Home Organization In Beautifully Organized: A Guide to Function and Style in Your Home, Nikki Boyd shares her best advice for how to create an organized, beautiful, and welcoming home. Nikki developed and honed her five essential steps to an organized home through her experience working as a professional organizer. In Beautifully…
Academic, Author, and Senior Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute, Richard Rothstein writes about how federally subsidized, single-family subdivisions—like Levittown in Long Island—created a white noose around urban areas.
Many people don’t know that every home in Levittown which was funded by the Federal Housing Administration was built for perspective buyers with an explicit clause not to sell, rent or re-sell a home to an African American. Although these deeds are no longer enforced or enforceable, over generations, the loss of equity and the discrepancy between wealth in Black households is entirely attributable to unconstitutional, federal housing policy that has never been remedied.
It’s also a powerful reminder to never take home for granted.
Widely heralded as a "masterful" (The Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced…
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives about adoption, exposing the fallacy that adoption is always good.
In this story, I reckon with the pain and unanswered questions of my own experience and explore broader issues surrounding adoption in the United States, including changing legal policies, sterilization, and compulsory relinquishment programs, forced assimilation of babies of color and Indigenous babies adopted into white families, and other liabilities affecting women, mothers, and children. Now is the moment we must all hear these stories.
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
