Heather Holland joined the Writers’ League of Texas in January 2015 and is attending the 2015 Summer Writing Retreat in Alpine. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Scribe: In what genre(s) do you write?
Heather Holland: Now: Memoir and nonfiction emphasizing the subjects of human rights, travel, and food. I love to interview people. For years, I only wrote poetry. I strayed away when my hand written poetry journal was stolen upon returning to Fort Hood from Iraq while serving in the U.S. Army.
Scribe: What authors would you like to have coffee or a beer with and which beverage?
HH: Coffee with Michael D. Coe
Beer with Óscar Martínez
Either with Valeria Luiselli
Cocktails with Amy Poehler.
Scribe: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what book would you want to have with you to keep you sane?
HH: The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz.
Scribe: What have you learned from your association with the Writers’ League?
HH: I have a fear that talking about writing becomes the death of it. WLT has opened up a whole community to me where I can talk about my craft without losing it’s pulse. I’m learning to be less of a mole person.
Scribe: Where do you see your writing taking you (or you taking it) in the future?
HH: This Summer: West Texas, hiding under a hat from Carol Dawson (so as not to reveal uniquely patterned female baldness from tearing my hair out -and pages- through the necessary evil we call the revision process)!
Anytime: I’m a risk taker always on the lookout for beauty thriving in dark places. My passion for the fight against human trafficking, ethical food, and obsession with uncovering the hidden, may lead me into various border towns, and exotic markets.
Long term: I would like to step away from my comfort zone and write novella flash fiction.
Scribe: Is there anything else about you that you would like to share with the world? An opportunity for blatant self-promotion!
HH: When my father reluctantly closed his store Fat City Records in Aspen, our family began to fall apart. We moved back and forth between Texas and Colorado, finally settling just north of Boulder.
Inside our household it looked like someone robbed a music store/library. It wasn’t unusual for my father to enlighten me with the location of his own dusty copy of a title I came home with. If he did not have something on hand, it just gave him an excuse to do one of his favorite things –take me and my identical twin sister Liz to used book stores. He allowed us to pick just one book each and he would buy it. It was like a treasure hunt. We searched between covers, until a few stale, yellowed pages in, we realized we were captivated.
I don’t want people to read my work because they know me, but because they are genuinely interested.
