About Me and Contact
Welcome to the Oracle House.
I’m Emily Grosvenor, a journalist who has been writing about places and spaces for 15 years.
I’ve spent the last four of them as Editor of Oregon Home magazine, where I tell stories about how people invite change into their lives by changing their surroundings. Houses are my jam, but I’ve also written about winning Live-Action Oregon Trail (for The Atlantic), why booksellers are my favorite evangelists (for Publishers Weekly), fragrances with spiritual notes (for Marie Claire), and a slew of travel stories for outlets like Sunset.
My work tends to walk the line between what we know from observation and what we can feel, and you can see that in my background. I’m a graduate of the Western School of Feng Shui, and I also hold an MA in Journalism from the University of Iowa and a BA in German from Penn State. I’m also a bit of a sucker for decorum and civil discourse, having been a Fulbright scholar to Germany from 2001-2003 and having worked for the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. from 2003-2006. Sometimes I do unrelated side projects, like publish a much-loved math picture book called Tessalation! and create the global holiday World Tessellation Day.
Many of the stories on this site are about my own house, a rather mundane (at least at first) suburban home we bought in the small Oregon town of McMinnville in 2011. She was pretty much a blank slate at first, with very few redeeming aesthetic qualities, but I have loved on her through the years to the point where she has become my greatest collaborator.
She is an Oracle House, by which I mean that my home is a place of great messaging and mystery, one that supports me on my journey. I do not see home as a retreat, rather as a place where you make manifest your values, deal with change, and empower yourself to get out there and be what you need to be in the world.
Welcome, thanks for dropping by, and I hope you find your time here magical and inspiring.