MIA at the Library
What’s a library without a children’s librarian? Holly Hubbard Preston says the townspeople of St. Helena are finding out.
Out in the Open
From the street, the Stonewall Inn isn’t much to look at. Some red brick topped by a plaster façade, punctuated by two arched doorways and four windows, one of which is rectangular and filled with a neon sign.
Chain of Good
In the lost and found of life, Holly Hubbard Preston learned that what you find isn’t necessarily what you were looking for.
Trauma Block
As I absorbed this tough news, I listened as my friend described the so-called dark wall her relative was trapped behind, rendering her all but unreachable.
Shot Glass
As a structural element, walls have many uses. In addition to separating people and spaces, walls hold up roofs and provide a hiding place for electrical equipment and the occasional mouse.
Stone Spirit Revival
I’m in the Hawaiian Islands this week for the Kauai Writer’s Conference that was taken online after I’d already booked my flight and lodging. So here I am working, swimming and also reading.
The Hole in the Wall
The guidebook promised us the one place in all of West Berlin where no physical barrier existed between the two Germanys. And here it was. Wide enough to allow railcar passage, this singular gap in the famous Cold War all lay at the end of a wide...
Field of My Dreams
The field pictured above is a real place, located near the border separating the neighboring German states of Bavaria and Thuringia. I remember being weak in the knees as I snapped the shot. About five months earlier I’d pictured this place...
The Wall2Wall Project
Since early childhood, I’ve been preoccupied with walls. Imprinted in my earliest memory is an illustration of a boy on a swing peering over a wall. The picture sits alongside a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson aptly named “The Swing”. My mother...
Virtual Book Talk: The Last Nomad
Napa Bookmine Author Event // Shugri Said Salh – The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert On August 4, 2021, Napa Bookmine presented a virtual event with Shugri Said Salh in conversation with local writer Holly Hubbard Preston...
Virtual Author Hour with Carol Edgarian
New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian and Holly Hubbard Preston discuss Carol’s latest novel, VERA, on Thursday, June 3rd 2021. This grand adventure set in 1906 San Francisco features an unforgettable heroine coming of age in the...
Girl Growing
First published by online literary journal, Herstry. Elise is standing in front of her dresser mirror, a tangerine in one hand, a wad of Kleenex tissue in the other. Her dark-eyed reflection stares back at me beneath a fringe of stylish...