Kathryn Holzman

Kathryn Holzman is an award-winning fiction writer whose work explores family, place, memory, migration, and the complicated choices that shape our lives. Raised in Seattle and California’s Santa Clara Valley, she attended Stanford University and NYU before moving to New York City, where she wrote poetry and became involved in the city’s literary community. She later built a career in health-care administration before returning to her first passion: fiction. Today she lives in New England with her husband, a digital artist, and draws inspiration from the landscapes and communities of Vermont and the Pioneer Valley.

Holzman is the author of three novels—Real Estate (2020), Granted (2022), and The Cost of Electricity (2023)—as well as two collections of short fiction, Migrations and Flatlanders: Short Fiction from Vermont. Her short stories have appeared in more than twenty literary magazines and print anthologies. In 2020, she received the Grand Prize in the Eyelands International Short Story Contest for her story “The Long Lost Bottom.”

Her fiction frequently places intimate family stories against larger historical and cultural transformations. Real Estate, set in California's Santa Clara Valley as it changes from an agricultural landscape into Silicon Valley, follows two neighboring families across several decades. Granted tells the story of a Mi’kmaw boy whose survival after being kidnapped by a Nova Scotia settler depends upon the rebellious daughter of a colonist. The Cost of Electricity follows Lulu, the daughter of pioneers, from the University of Oregon in 1902 through Portland and Hollywood as she pursues independence and a modern life.

Real Estate received a strong notice from Publishers Weekly, which described Holzman’s prose as “accomplished” and said that it “propels her beleaguered characters through tragedies and watershed moments.” The review concluded that there was “much to enjoy in this well-constructed sketch of people constrained by their family and their choices.”

Fellow writers have likewise praised Holzman’s ability to create vivid characters and authentic worlds. Yvonne Daley, author of Going Up the County, praised Flatlanders for its “intimacy that comes from close observation,” while author Verandah Porche called Holzman’s landscape “compelling, fertile, and mythic” and wrote that, “At once unsparing and openhearted, authenticity is her strength.”

Caren Simpson McVicker, author of Henderson House, said Granted is a riveting novel that is as tender and beautiful as it is heartbreaking, and praised how Holzman expertly wove two families together in a tale of adventure, sacrifice, betrayal, and forgiveness.

Holzman’s work reflects a lifelong fascination with the ways ordinary people are shaped by history, geography, family, and change. Whether writing about Vermont neighbors, California families caught in the birth of Silicon Valley, or characters confronting the upheavals of earlier generations, she brings an observant eye and an abiding compassion to people whose lives do not always unfold according to plan.