Our Story
A small family publisher in Orlando, Florida — named for two extraordinary grandmothers and built on stories of the rescue dogs we love.
Queen & Briggs Press is named in honor of my grandmothers — two extraordinary women whose grit, discipline, sacrifice, and resolve shaped me, my family, and everything we make.
They passed down the same lessons across generations: work that matters. Faith that holds. Family that endures. And love big enough to lift everyone around you.
Every book we publish carries their fingerprints. Every story we tell honors what they built.
Queen was born in 1920s North Carolina, the daughter of sharecroppers, and one of fifteen children. She later married Joe Hicks Sr. and raised fourteen children of her own — and most of her grandchildren too.
She worked multiple jobs out of sheer determination. She maintained a household that held together through anything. She never stopped working. Not once.
Because of Queen's sacrifice and relentless work ethic, her descendants became retired senior military leaders, head librarians, nurses, pastors, a mathematician, florists, a dentist, a technology director, public servants, software engineers, teachers, warehouse leaders, and entrepreneurs.
She built a foundation of discipline, sacrifice, and perseverance that continues across generations. Her life is a reminder that strength, responsibility, and relentless work can transform entire families.
Ruth was born in 1917 in Sussex County, Virginia, one of twelve children. Her father descended from the Nottoway Indians; her mother from freed Black store owners during the Civil War era.
She completed only the eighth grade. She married in 1935. She began as a maid and a seamstress.
And then she built.
She and her husband became entrepreneurs — opening a beauty salon, a barber shop, and a gasoline trucking business before moving into real estate investing in the 1950s in the Deep South. When local banks refused to serve Black families in Emporia, Virginia, Ruth became the community's informal bank — helping families finance homes, businesses, and opportunities they otherwise could not access.
Widowed in 1963, she kept building.
She quietly financed college educations, home purchases, and countless needs across generations. She provided business services to a local funeral home. She managed her properties and her finances well into her later years.
She worked until she was 88.
From my grandmother, I learned everything — from changing a tire to settling accounts and collecting rent from tenants.
Today, Ruth's descendants include an academic dean, a nurse, a business owner, and a technology director.
She did the work others wouldn't. She built what others said couldn't be built. She left generations stronger because of it.
Ruth Briggs Wilks was Built Ruthless.
The name came first. The purpose came later.
Almost ten years ago, God gave me the name Queen & Briggs.
Queen was the first name of my paternal grandmother. Briggs was the maiden name of my maternal grandmother. At the time, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with those two names together. I just knew the name meant something, and I never forgot it.
For almost a decade, Queen & Briggs stayed with me, a name without a business and a purpose I hadn’t discovered yet.
Then life redirected me.
After 13 years with Disney as a two-time award-winning leader and technology executive, I was laid off.
For the first time in a very long time, I had an opportunity to stop. To slow down. To step outside of the constant rhythm of meetings, deadlines, deliverables, and the next thing that needed to get done, and really think about what I wanted the next phase of my life to look like.
I started asking myself a different kind of question:
What could I build that I actually cared about?
Not something I did simply to earn a paycheck. Something I was passionate about. Something that brought me joy. Something that allowed me to create, tell stories, and maybe even help other people along the way.
That’s when a name God had placed on my heart almost ten years earlier finally began to make sense.
Queen & Briggs had found its purpose.
The funny thing is, when I look back over my life, the pieces were always there.
I’ve been writing stories and drawing since I was in elementary school, and I was even programming back then, too. Throughout my life, I’ve always had a love for photography, drawing, graphic design, and figuring out how things work.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to work in environments where storytelling, technology, data, and creativity came together.
Looking back, I can see that those things were never really separate parts of who I am. They were all part of the same story.
Queen & Briggs Press is where they finally come together.
We’re a small, family-owned business based in Orlando, Florida. My mom and my daughter help me with pictures and proofing, and honestly, I couldn’t do it without them. Three generations of women working together to bring these stories to life.
And my dad, my angel, is still part of this journey, too. His words, his wisdom, and the things he taught me continue to inspire and help shape my mindfulness and affirmation coloring books to this day.
In many ways, Queen & Briggs Press is a family project, built from the people we love, the dogs we’ve loved, the lives we’ve lived, and the memories we carry with us.
And that’s part of what makes Queen & Briggs Press different.
Our stories start with something real.
The dogs in our books aren’t characters I invented. They’re based on the real dogs who have been part of our family since 1994. The people you see in our books are members of my actual family. The homes, photographs, memories, personalities, and experiences behind the stories come from our lives.
Sometimes I’m telling one of our dogs’ true stories, how they came into our family and the life they lived with us.
Sometimes I’m telling the story of something that actually happened in our family.
And sometimes I take one of my own real-life experiences and creatively reimagine it through one of our dogs, like Bronx Goes Golfing, inspired by my own journey learning to play golf.
That’s what makes our story coloring books a little different.
They’re not simply collections of coloring pages. They’re pieces of our family’s story, creatively retold through art and made into experiences you can color.
Our pack includes Annabelle, Gigi, and Bronx, along with the beloved members of our pack who’ve crossed the rainbow bridge: Jasper, Brownie, and Hershey.
We’ve been a dog family for more than 30 years. Each of these dogs has a personality, a history, and a place in our family. Now, some of those stories get to live on through Queen & Briggs Press.
The dogs are real. The people are real. The memories are real. And behind every book, there’s a story.
I’m not a professional illustrator, and I don’t pretend to be. I don’t have a team of professional illustrators on staff or on retainer creating pages for me.
I’m an independent creator and publisher who has been writing and drawing since elementary school, with a lifelong love of photography, graphic design, technology, and storytelling.
So I built a creative process that allows me to bring my own ideas to life.
I write, design, draw, and creatively direct every Queen & Briggs Press book from the first idea to the finished page. I use my own photography and sketches, digital design and editing tools, and modern technology, including AI-assisted illustration, as part of that process.
But creating an image is only the beginning.
I can spend countless hours developing and refining a single coloring page. I revise scenes again and again. I redraw elements, adjust compositions, remove or simplify details that won’t create a good coloring experience, test pages myself, and sometimes start over completely when something doesn’t meet my standard.
I spent much of my career leading in Fortune 50 companies, where I learned the importance of thoughtful product development, quality, and attention to detail. I bring that same discipline to Queen & Briggs Press.
The finished experience matters to me.
I want someone opening one of my books to feel the care behind it, from the story and artwork to the page design, coloring experience, and smallest details.
The Queen & Briggs Press look wasn’t created by studying another artist’s coloring pages or trying to recreate someone else’s work. It grew from my own ideas, stories, photographs, experiences, and creative vision.
The ideas are mine. The stories come from my life, my family, and my dogs. The creative vision is mine. The countless decisions, revisions, and hours behind each finished product are mine, too.
That’s what makes the Queen & Briggs Press Story Coloring Book Collection such a unique niche in today’s coloring book market. These aren’t simply coloring pages gathered into a book. They’re original stories, characters, memories, and experiences, thoughtfully developed into something you can be part of through coloring.
Technology, including AI, helps me bring that creative vision to life.
But technology isn’t Queen & Briggs Press.
I am.
The tools may be modern, but the creativity and the stories are ours.
One of our books, A Mindful Moment: Guided by Hershey, holds especially deep meaning for me.
It’s the book that helped carry me through some of the hardest seasons of my life. Coloring scripture, breathing through the pages, and remembering who God is, that’s what got me through.
If that book can give someone else even a little of the peace it gave me, then this work has already been worth it.
And maybe that’s ultimately what Queen & Briggs Press is about.
Not simply making coloring books.
It’s about turning the things we’ve lived, the people and animals we’ve loved, and the memories we don’t want to lose into something another person can experience, color, and make their own.
Queen and Briggs weren’t simply the inspiration for the name.
They are the foundation behind it.
Queen was the first name of my paternal grandmother, and Briggs was the maiden name of my maternal grandmother. They were two extraordinary women whose grit, discipline, sacrifice, and resolve helped shape the woman and leader I am today.
Their legacy is the brand.
When you hold a Queen & Briggs Press book in your hands, you’re holding a little piece of the spirit of two women who refused to accept the limits the world tried to place on them.
Two women who built.
Two women who persevered.
Two women who lifted entire families across generations.
That’s the standard.
That’s the inheritance.
That’s the work.
— Kimmie Hicks
Founder, Queen & Briggs Press
Granddaughter of Queen and Ruth
Orlando, Florida
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