If my mouth wasn’t taped up for sleep, I would have screamed. I was in bed, enjoying the morning breeze before the sun was fully up, bright and high, reading Rioghnach Robinson’s novel Bad Words. ...
Topic
books
Hurricane Lamps & Anthurium Thrones
While walking through the To Uncover and Reveal to the World: Arturo Schomburg’s Library exhibit, a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture mentioned a phrase that really...
Bubbly Girls
I went home for my mother’s birthday two weeks ago. (Y’ALL! VIRGO SEASON WORE ME OUT!) She likes to spend the day at the Spa at the Hotel Hershey and has for the last 15 years or so. In between...
The Magic Is Everywhere
To know me is to know I think life is serendipitous. I had quite literally just written the Editor’s Letter for Magic Potions, where I talked about a book that considered perfume an...
Magic Potions
“Weren’t we all modern embodiments of Emma Bovary, I thought, seeking magic potions to transform our lives?” That sentence leapt off the page of The Perfume Lover by Denyse Beaulieu. It felt like...
Saw Things I Imagined
Imagine me, sitting in a dark theater, watching the opening scene of the Devil Wears Prada 2, when writer Andrea Sachs admits to a roomful of her industry peers that she and a table of her...
Setting the Stage
Do you ever get goosebumps when you encounter someone who is fully operating in their gift? I feel that way every single time I smell a Marissa Zappas perfume. There is a spirituality to them that’s...
The Books Behind Fluff
When I first got the idea for this newsletter, I had no idea that books would play such a major part in its development. I’m not sure why though, because, for as long as I’ve known me, I’ve always...