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O4 May 2O21

Running from Something, Looking for Something: photographic artist Jonathan Liu drives deep into the Icelandic glacier to capture the mystery of the sublime


A dirt road stretches out into the distance. Its miles, yet untraversed, point towards mountains far on the horizon and the landscape rolls away on all sides. Here begins Running from Something, Looking for Something, a series of photographs by Jonathan Liu... read more


8 Jun 2O2O

Health Is Wealth by Katie – New York-based fashion consultant Katie Cervini is on a mission to demystify women’s health


Health Is Wealth is a new blog from New York-based fashion consultant Katie Cervini, who writes about women’s health in a way that is refereshingly human. It is an open space for conversation with tips founded on Katie’s own wealth of knowledge to help women get to know their bodies, their health and the science behind it… read more


6 May 2O2O

Isolation 2020: ‘It’s whatever you want it to be’ – creative photographer Kirsty Marshall creates a montage of lockdown messages to explore what it means to live in isolation


We are stuck, in a way the world has not experienced before, inside our homes. The pubs are closed. The nine-to-five is working from home, in furlough or redundant. The planes are grounded, the trains are empty and the cars only start when they have to. The world we knew has stopped but, for the first time, we’re in it together. For the first time, we are joined together as a planet in experiencing a global pandemic, and that is difficult to comprehend. There are almost no words for it… read more


18 Aug 2O19

John Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum (1976)


The voice over the moving image suggests there is a story to tell, as though actors are following directions around a set and therefore moving towards a common cause – that of narrative. However, as we watch the film, we soon become aware of the director’s lack of authority and control over the people, vehicles and objects that move in, through and out of the frame… read more


4 May 2O18

Recipe for Being a Woman
by Hermione Cameron


Recipe for Being a Woman is a playful and pithy debut collection from a poet whose awareness and grip on language allows her to create a concise and deeply ironic sense of being in the world. Hermione Cameron speaks of, to and for the modern age in 28 poems, in which she shows us the world anew, as if standing on our heads… read more


14 May 2O18

Darker With the Lights On
by David Hayden


Darker With the Lights On is a collection of 20 short stories by David Hayden, a prolific writer of short fiction, published by Little Island Press. With an abundance of imagination through surreal and unbounded worlds beyond and the beneath the world we inhabit, Darker With the Lights On is like taking a train in the dark, the carriage so brightly lit that you struggle to see a world you know is there, beyond the pane of glass… read more


13 Apr 2O18

Bone Ovation
by Caroline Hardaker


Bone Ovation is the debut poetry pamphlet from Caroline Hardaker. It is a slim collection of 20 poems, published by Valley Press, that satisfies an interest in myth and folklore. Hardaker’s poetry is an example of mythology as a splitting open of the present, of stories and a deep-seated connection to the past. It considers an element common to all, ‘Composite of brittle chalk and precious like the stalks of daisies in chains.’ Bone… read more


3 Oct 2O17

Paul Hawkins’
Diisonance book launch


On Friday 8 September, a curious group of people met at The Gallery Café in Bethnal Green for the launch of Diisonance – a book of protest texts, art and collaborative experimental poetry… read more


29 Sep 2O17

Crump Redivivus 
by Neil Godsell


Neil Godsell’s debut novel Crump Redivivus, published by The Voidery Aperture in 2016, is a work of contemporary fiction that experiments with language and literary form. The novel is described by its publisher as ‘a stark exploration of a life given over to the observation of other, equally unsatisfactory lives’… read more
Mark

Health Is Wealth
by Katie


New York-based fashion consultant Katie Cervini is on a mission to demystify women’s health.

Health Is Wealth is a new blog from New York-based fashion consultant Katie Cervini, who writes about women’s health in a way that is refreshingly human. It is an open space for conversation with tips founded by Katie’s own wealth of knowledge to help women get to know their bodies, their health and the science behind it.

She says: ‘My goal for HIW is to be a place where people can come to learn easy tips, tricks, knowledge, fun facts, and witchy shit to help make them feel their best. I understand the frustration of not feeling yourself for a very long time and always searching for the answers. Although no one person is the same when it comes to individual health, at least HIW can be a place to get the information easily with zero judgement.’

It is liberating to see a doctrine of expansiveness in women’s health, beauty and wellness being forged right now – with companies built on community like Glossier, which started out in 2010 as the blog Into The Gloss written by founder Emily Weiss – to rethink the business of beauty. Glossier’s Solution exfoliating skin perfector is one of HIW’s ‘Favourite Things’!

There is infinite space on the internet for these communities and conversations that help women to feel their best, because we have to deal with a lot of shit (I won’t get into the politics). Our bodies are our decision and being a woman is whatever we want – or need – it to be; every version is different and unique. As poet and singer Jill Scott says, in the 2005 documentary film David Chappelle’s Block Party: ‘We all have our own thing, that’s the magic. That everybody comes with their own sense of strength and their own queendom. Mine could never compare to hers and hers could never compare to mine.’ When the reporter asks if Scott is nervous to go on stage after Erykah Badu, she replies with a soft laugh: ‘Have you ever seen me perform?’

In her book The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, writer and activist Sonya Renee Taylor gets into what lies at the heart of Scott’s message. She says: ‘Radical self-love does not call on us to be less of ourselves. Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs.’ It’s about cultivating your own queendom: that inner strength and discipline to take care of you, to feel your best, to be the best version of yourself, and to take that out into the world to be a blessing to somebody else.



With its nostalgic 90s aesthetic, HIW reminds me of early womanhood watching Sex and the City and adolescent conversations with my sister at home in our pyjamas, or with friends drinking wine and cooking dinner together in our early 20s – the kinds of zero judgement spaces where I felt safe, understood and truly supported. These spaces helped me to grow as a woman. But as I’ve gotten older, it’s been harder to find these spaces and I have been surrounded less and less by this female energy as our geographies changed and we all got so busy with our lives and responsibilities in our late 20s, our 30s and beyond.



When the time comes (as it sometimes does) to take a pause (more so now than ever), I realise that this safe space isn’t somewhere far away or in the past but it’s part of me, and I carry it everywhere I go – it is my strength, confidence, resilience and it starts with taking care of myself. Finding time to nurture this safe space and prioritise rituals of self-care (or knowing where to start) isn’t always easy – but that’s where HIW comes in.

Katie’s project helps women to start calling the shots and be the experts in their own lives. Through her blog posts, she is spreading the word that if you don’t feel your best, you don’t have to live with it. You don’t have to try to function when you don’t feel yourself. You just need to do the homework.

In her post ‘The C Word… Cortisol’ she explains that feeling tired, foggy, bloated and irritable might be down to overactive adrenal glands caused by stress. In ‘Dear Coffee, I will always love you. Good-Bye’, she writes a day-to-day break down of cutting out caffeine after she felt unusually tired and heavy on a run. In ‘Your Cycle. Learn It. Love It’, Katie outlines the four phases of our periods, giving advice on how to look after ourselves in each one.

Katie recently documented a four-day detox to cleanse her body of synthetic hormones after having an IUD removed. In ‘Let The Detox Begin’ she breaks down the cleanse, created by alternative health and wellness guru Alisa Vitti, and shares the results in ‘Post Detox Feels’. 

I spoke to Katie to find more out about HIW and her vision for the project, about life and times in New York during lockdown, and how she finds time to balance self-care with a busy working life.

Kirsty Watling: You began the project right at the start of 2020. A lot has changed since then, but you launched your new website on 1st May. Congratulations! Why did you decide to start HIW? How did it come about?
Katie Cervini: I started HIW due to my own health journey with PCOS and hormone imbalance. I struggled for ten years trying to figure out what was happening with my body. Once I found a solution, I wanted to share it with other women and men. I also had a lot of my friends asking me about what supplements I take, skincare I use, and what my wellness routine is. I started posting on my personal Instagram, and I found myself talking a lot about health and wellness wherever I went. I want people to feel good, even if it is incorporating one new supplement or product to their daily routine. Everyone deserves to feel their best, HIW can hopefully achieve that.

KW: Following @hiw_bykatie has been a relief to my Instagram feed from all the news of lockdown and Covid-19—it’s definitely been an antidote from all the stress and uncertainty at the moment. How has it been for you living in New York?
KC: Living in NYC during Covid-19 has been interesting. NYC is home to me, but it’s not the same city when everything is happening on a normal day. NYC feels hard and loves hard, and there were and still are a lot of emotions in this city. I have definitely found new parts of the city that I used to take for granted, but now I appreciate them so much. When it is nice weather the city sometimes feels like summer camp. Everyone is outside walking around, having a picnic outside, or biking. I have embraced this city more than ever because NYC is the greatest and strongest city. 

KW: HIW creates a community for women to learn about their health, and connect with each other to share their experiences. What does community mean to you? 

KC: Community is one of my favourite words. To me, community should be a place where people can come share their thoughts and opinions. I have never believed that a community should be a place where there is only one opinion or one way to think. I want HIW to be a place where people can come to share their thoughts about a specific topic or share a product they tried that maybe I didn't know about. I would be nowhere without the HIW community, it is one of the reasons why I started the platform. 

KW: What has been the biggest change for you on your healthy journey?

KC: Learning to accept and love my body like I never have before. In this day and age, everyone is so critical of their own bodies and other people’s bodies. I was my worst critic, I would look at myself and express so much shame towards it, it broke my heart. My goal is to help get people to look in the mirror and say to themselves, ‘thank you’. Our bodies are incredible and powerful, we should love them!

KW: How do you balance a busy working life with keeping on track with your own health choices and self care? 

KC: For me, it’s all about listening to my body and what it wants and needs. I stopped drinking coffee because my body wasn’t benefitting from it, so why would I continue to give my body something it didn't want? 

I make sure I get eight hours of sleep every night because that’s what my body needs. Some mornings I wake up jumping out of bed, and then there are mornings where I need to snooze 15 minutes more. I always do my workouts in the morning and get my body moving, even if it is just 20 minutes. I feel like it gets me ready for the rest of the day.  

I drink a lot of water throughout the day as well, to keep me hydrated and alert—again, my body craves it. At night I stop working (most nights) around 6.30pm and take time to make dinner and have wine. I love to cook and take time for me. 

I always take my vitamins, it’s a habit now, and I feel so good now that I have found what my body needs. I do all this self-care because it makes me feel good. My body does a lot for me each day, so why not treat it to what it needs, and repeat everything the next day, and the day after that? 

KW: Why do you think it’s important for women—and for everybody—to have a better understanding of their bodies? 

KC: Our bodies are all we have. It's the home for our heart, our brain, and our organs, it deserves us to take care of it. If we want to live long lives, we need to make small adjustments to create healthy bodies. 

KW: What is your vision for the future of HIW? 

KC: I want to continue to share knowledge I learn, but the end goal is to create my own supplements for people to easily add to their lifestyles to make them healthier and more energised. ︎

Following Katie on her own healthy journey, HIW reminds us to get to know our own bodies and make a lifelong commitment to ourselves. It reminds us, in the words of Jill Scott, to live life like it’s golden.

Just remember, Health Is Wealth. 

Look out for new posts each week and follow @hiw_bykatie for updates.