Walter Holland Papers

Provenance

Donated by Walter R. Holland, 2018.

Use Restrictions

Donor retains copyright.

Scope and Content

This collection includes copies of books, articles, and essays by Walter Holland. There are also personal journals from his early years in Virginia as well as original manuscripts, both typed and hand-written, of poems, short stories and plays (some of which were never published). There are also manuscripts of LGBT writer friends. Correspondence includes personal letters from friends and family as well as correspondence with editors and publishers. There is an extensive collection of books used in research for Holland’s CUNY Graduate Center dissertation, “American Gay Male Poetry Since World War II,” and copies of the dissertation. There are books by friends such as Alfred Corn, Steve Cordova, Dennis Rhodes, Justin Chin, etc., many with inscriptions. Included are records of Magic City Press, Holland’s publishing imprint, along with press releases, reviews and promotional material for his books A Journal of the Plague Years and The March. There are photos of Holland and friends at home, travelling and at readings. Also included are interviews on audiocassette with various gay poets including Perry Brass, Ian Young, Richard Howard, Felice Picano, Alfred Corn and Edward Field, used for dissertation research.

History or Bio

Walter Holland, Ph.D. (b. 1953), is a gay writer, scholar, essayist, and critic. He is the author of three poetry collections, Circuit (Chelsea Station Editions, 2010), Transatlantic (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), and A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (Magic City Press, 1992), and a novel, The March (Hard Candy Books, 1996). He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from City College and a Ph.D in English Literature from The Graduate Center CUNY. His dissertation on American gay poetry since World War II received the 1998 Paul Monette Dissertation Award. He has lectured extensively at many conferences, poetry festivals and colleges.

Born in Queens, New York, Holland was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia. He attended Bard College in Annandale-on-the-Hudson, N.Y. from 1972 to 1976 where he took a B.A. in Dance and Literature. After college he studied dance and performed in New York City and was a reviewer for the New York State Council on the Arts. He was on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Studio. He returned to Virginia in 1980 to take pre-requisites toward an M.S. degree in Physical Therapy at Columbia University. He completed his studies at Columbia in 1985 and worked as a physical therapist in Manhattan from 1985 until retiring in 2015 while simultaneously pursuing his career as a writer, poet and lecturer. He has participated in numerous gay and lesbian readings, attended literary conferences and has a unique personal perspective and knowledge of the early days of New York gay and lesbian literary culture and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic during the eighties and nineties.

His poetry has appeared in many publications such as Bay Windows, Body Positive, Christopher Street, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Provincetown Magazine, and many more. His poetry has also appeared in Found Object, Jugular Defenses: an AIDS Anthology (The Oscars Press of London) and The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature. He provided editorial assistance on Assotto Saint’s last book of poetry, Wishing for Wings. He has published essays about poetry for Lambda Book Report, The James White Review, The Journal of Homosexuality, Lambda Book Report and Body Positive.

Holland’s short stories have been published in Art and Understanding, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, and the anthology Rebel Yell. A memoir piece appears in Mama’s Boy: Gay Men Writing About Their Mothers (Painted Leaf Press, 2000).

Holland co-wrote the lyrics and the book for a musical, “The Age of Innocence,” based on the novel by Edith Wharton, with the gay composer Ted Kociolek. It received two staged readings at the York Theater in New York in the early nineties and a featured reading at The Florida Festival of New Musicals at the Winter Park Playhouse in Florida in 2017.

Holland is currently at work on a personal memoir which deals with the New York dance scene in the seventies and eighties. He also writes reviews for LambdaLiterary.com and Pleiades literary journal. He lives in New York with his husband and partner of thirty years, Howard Frey.

Note: A comprehensive biography and bibliography are available by request.

Folder List

Unfoldered Items

Boxes 7-9

Books from Holland’s library.

Note: Inventory of titles available by request.

Box 10

Audiocassetes 1-8. Interviews with various gay poets: Perry Brass, Ian Young, Richard Howard, Felice Picano, Alfred Corn and Edward Field (used for dissertation research).

VHS Cassette 1. Compilation of Leather Bar, Fire Island, AIDS Memorial Quilt, Protests, Marches, and AIDS-related news clips w/ music track [no credtis of dates]

VHS Cassette 2. Blanche Holland Memorial Service, Westminster Canterbury, Lynchburg VA, May 4, 2002

Note: Audio and visual tapes are not yet available for research.