Holly Hubbard Preston’s life as a writer began in front of a neighbor’s electric typewriter when she was four.

Save for the time when she sat on a bench near Columbus Circle in New York and contemplated giving up her $8 per hour production-assistant job at CNN for a career in criminal law, she has never wanted to do anything but write. 

To the pay the bills and keep her fingers on the keyboard, she’s written for trade magazines and mainstream newspapers, including the New York Times Global Edition where she was a correspondent for 14 years. Her essays for radio and print include one for Newsweek that was anthologized in a collection used to teach college students how to write. 

A regular contributor to NPR’s San Francisco affiliate, her recorded Perspectives have accompanied Bay Area residents to work and school and the breakfast table for nearly 20 years. Of late, you can find her on Medium and also at Herstry. 

Fiction, which was always her endgame, is finally front and center.  In addition to publishing short stories, Holly is now seeking representation for What Birds Know, a debut novel set in the former East Germany and inspired by real events. She has a second novel, Snag Town, that is also in the works.

A juggler as well as a wordsmith, she is a mother, wife, student, teacher, volunteer and voyager. A Northern Californian native, she is no west coast snob: in addition to San Francisco and Los Angeles, she happily lived in Washington D.C., New York and, for a brief time, Nuremberg, Germany.