Meet the Author of THE FIRST APARTMENT BOOK

Avid Bookshop is pleased to bring Heather Summerville to the shop on Sat., 9/14/13, at 6:30pm, to discuss her book THE FIRST APARTMENT BOOK: COOL DESIGN FOR SMALL SPACES.

This star design team offers bold ideas for achieving big style in small spaces—on any budget.

A first apartment allows you to finally do what you want with your own space, but it can be tricky to decorate. Luckily, Heather Summerville, Kyle Schuneman and Joe Schmelzer knows that a paper-thin wallet and four plain walls don’t have to stand in your way, and the ten amazing, real apartments in this book show it.

From coast to coast, these fabulous first homes are the perfect balance between cool design and comfort, and they offer plenty of practical ideas for making your apartment feel open, organized, and inviting. Examples include:

■ Multifunctional studios
■ A loft that was sectioned into livable areas
■ Cookie-cutter apartments with one-of-a-kind personality
■ Shared spaces that accommodate different decorating tastes
■ Fantastic examples of how to display collections, hide unsightly stuff, and manage picky landlords

The creative solutions reveal how you can make your space feel much larger than it really is—and how it can reflect your passions, your travels, and your location. The book will inspire you to use your surroundings for decorating ideas (think taxi-cab-yellow accents in New York or graffiti-like dip-dye curtains in Seattle). Short on time and long on style, the thirty DIY projects here include no-sew pillows and a dresser update using a little glue and decorative paper. 

Full of bold, vibrant photos, an extensive resource section, and hundreds of big ideas for small spaces, this book proves that there are no limits on how spacious and how cool your first apartment can feel.

About Heather: 

Heather Summerville penned her first serious work at the age of 14. It was a 50-page screenplay, self-published in her basement and sold to neighbors and relatives for $5. From that moment on, the Atlanta native was hooked on the idea of writing as a career. She studied journalism at The University of Georgia, completed a creative writing program at Oxford, and made a beeline for New York City post graduation.

Summerville got her start with publications like InStyle and Travel and Leisure before settling down at Lucky magazine, where she spent seven years, three of which as its senior editor. She’s covered all manner of beats, from fashion news to celebrity profiles to interior design trends. Since leaving Lucky, Summerville launched her own freelance writing and retail consulting company, Edit at Large, where she continues to write for publications like Real Simple and New York Magazine, contributes to a number of national online weeklies, and has a roster of commercial clients that include Madewell, Michael Kors, and ASOS.

The Brooklyn-based writer is hard at work on her first novel and finds there’s no better cure for chronic bouts of writer’s block than frequent and compulsive redecorating.