Barbara Holland

Barbara Holland started out in poetry, winning national awards while still in high school, but converted to prose when faced with a living to earn.

Writing, she says, was never a decision, since it was the only thing she knew how to do. “I could barely tie my shoes or count my fingers. It was write or starve.”

She has written short fiction, essays, and articles for a wide range of publications, including Smithsonian, McCalls, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Prevention, World History, Parents, Country Journal, Woman’s Day, Ms.,Miami Herald, Writers Digest, the Washington Post, Washington Times, Washingtonian magazine, Philadelphia magazine, Arts & Entertainment, Discovery, Family Circle, Cat Fancy, Working Mother, Seventeen, etc., etc. She was a contributing editor and columnist for Mid-Atlantic Country and regular columnist for Country Journal.

Her fifteen books - history, humor, essays, biography, memoirs, juveniles - cover fields so various as to suggest Attention Deficit Disorder. Her only play won the 2000-20001 Playwrights First competition sponsored by The National Arts Club in New York.

She has three children and currently lives in a cabin on a mountain in Virginia.

“We sometimes hear it said of an iconoclastic essayist like Mark Twain or Russell Baker that he is ‘a national treasure.’ I vote to include Barbara Holland in this treasure chest.”