My Take on Spring Market 2022, High Point, NC

                               About Mireille Grangenois, author of The Spring Market Series                                       
​for Liz Johnson Design Studio

 Spring. A time for renewal. A time for reawakening. About how we think, talk and consider our lives. How we live with the pieces we select for our homes. How they live with us. Join me. Spring Market High Point Reawakening.

Mireille Grangenois, formerly Publisher of the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Chronicle of Philanthropy, is a writer whose provocative short stories of fiction are primarily about seasoned women of color, all inspired by true events.

Her stories range from enchanting and romantic, to evocative and mystical, to sensual and steamy. In each, as she builds from a rich roux of truth, Mireille develops satisfying tales of women of a certain age defying the conventional narrative that they and their lives lack visibility and value.

Even when set in unremarkable places, like corner stores, gas stations, suburban cul-de-sac streets, Mireille’s characters -- based on actual women - are having remarkable experiences as they move through their daily lives. Unplanned and unpredictable, seasoned women -- including the author -- are enjoying endearing, hopeful, romantic, suggestive and just plain fun interludes and adventures with mostly unfamiliar but attractive, confident, playful men.

In this collaboration with Liz Johnson Design Studio, Mireille wanted to expand the canvas of characters, making furniture as central to the story as the individuals.  Of the featured tables, chairs, rugs, and lamps, Mireille says, ”We don’t merely live with these pieces, they live within us.”  This Spring Market series presented an opportunity “to glimpse that deeper meaning, told through an economy of words.”  

A journalist with an undergraduate degree from New York University, Mireille put herself through college working as a news aide at The New York Times. Early in her career, she held reporting jobs at The Baltimore Sun, Business Week magazine, and was a member of the inaugural newsroom staff at USA Today.  After serving as a leading proponent of newsroom diversity at an influential non-profit news editors’ association, she assumed business-side leadership roles at preeminent news organizations, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and The Baltimore Sun. 

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Mireille has written about newsrooms and racial inequity for CNN.com, and in the recent past contributed opinion pieces to ESPN’s The Undefeated, and a personal reflection essay on cooking and grief for The Washington Post. In 2021, she turned her attention to short story fiction.

Mireille maintains a daily walking habit, an occasional game of tennis and is a lifelong, card-carrying beach bum. A self-taught enthusiast of cooking, interior design and gardening, she knows enough to be nurturing or dangerous to family, friends and flora.

​Mireille and her husband, author and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Steve Holmes live in Columbia, MD.