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Welcome to my web site. I am the author of My Heart is a Mountain: Tales of Magic and the Land (Holy Cow Press), available in bookstores everywhere and also for sale on this web site. I write about people and how they are shaped by land and place.

           My Heart is a Mountain is available for purchase at:

• Northwoods Friends of he Arts Gallery, Cook, MN
• The Comet Theater, Cook, MN
• Furniture Plus, Cook, MN
• Gilley's Naturals, Cook, MN
• Lyric Center for the Arts, First Stage Gallery, Virginia, MN
• Howard Street Booksellers, Hibbing, MN
• The Pebble Spa, Ely, MN
• Evergreen Cottage, Ely, MN
• Piragis Northwood's Company, Ely, MN
• City Drug, International Falls, MN
• Ronnings, International Falls,

I live in Minnesota with my husband on 10 acres in the boreal forest. Although the Minnesota north woods have been my home for the last 15 years, I spent the first 35 years of my life in large cities. Moving to the country was a huge life change and awakened a desire to write. The impact of moving from the city to a remote rural area continues to shape my writing; and magic and surrealism often show up in my stories. I love living close to the land and experiencing wild landscapes everywhere.

I’m currently working on a novel and my memoir. I’ve written two fantasy novels, and also enjoy writing essays on the powerful bond between humans and their companion animals.

I give writing workshops, work with writers one-on-one, am a freelance writer and editor, and teach yoga. I love reading, yoga, gardening, wilderness camping, music, cats, and being outside as much as possible.

Here's a short FAQ about My Heart is a Mountain, about me, and about my writing.

"Catherine Holm writes with great and winning assurance and with nuanced compassion. My Heart is a Mountain is a truly lovely book by a fine writer."
Robert Olen Butler
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"Catherine Holm is a gifted storyteller. She explores the journeys we must all take through grief and healing, life and death; and she writes of the land with the passion of a lover. Her writing is both magical and of the earth; lyrical and accessible. I highly recommend her stories to anyone who listens for the heartbeat of the earth."
Mary Casanova
Author of The Klipfish Code

"This fine debut collection of stories has great variety, and both reach and grasp of what it means to be fully human."
Will Weaver
Author of The Last Hunter: An American Family Album

FROM Mary Ann Grossmann of the Pioneer Press: "Gracefully written, interesting, and compassionate."

FROM THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: "America's mountains and forests take a special type of individual to call them home. My Heart is a Mountain: Tales of Magic and the Land is a collection of short stories along with some memoir from Catherine Holm as she speaks and reflects on mountain life and its special breed of challenge and the exhilaration that comes with it. A fascinating and insightful short fiction collection. My Heart is a Mountain is very highly recommended."--John Burroughs, reviewer

FROM Midwest reviewer Dave Wood (click on the link for full article): Rural genes bring out the best in this author.

FROM the NEMBA judging team (nominee for Northeastern MN Book Awards for publication in 2010):

"Holm has written a series of beautifully painted stories about the majesty of nature."

OTHER REVIEWS of My Heart is a Mountain

Grand Rapids Herald-Review
Mesabi Daily News
The Timberjay
Ken Wachsberger's blog

LISTEN TO A RADIO INTERVIEW with Catherine Holm about My Heart is a Mountain, writing, Yoga as Muse (tm), and woodpile wisdom.

FROM Sheila Packa, Poet Laureate of Duluth:

Barry Lopez, in Crossing Open Ground, has a wonderful essay “Landscape and Narrative.” He describes how the landscape we live in becomes internal. The structures of the landscape, the slope and peak of the mountain, the snow, the steady flow of the river, the placid lake, the animal we encounter, become structures of our thoughts and mind. As an example of how this works, I offer this poem written by Li Po, a Chinese poet from the year 701-762 CE

The birds have vanished in the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and I
until only the mountain remains. --Li Po

When a cat stares into the middle distance, we know there are worlds unseen that exist amid ordinary life in the kitchen or at the window. These glimpses are captured in Catherine Holm's book, My Heart Is A Mountain. Many of the stories center around relationships and female experience--indeed, it is one of her strengths that she so masterfully describes grief and loss so well. When somebody has died, who hasn't had the feeling perhaps of being touched in some way by the one who has passed on? Many readers will relate to the mother/daughter tale, and hearts will be touched by the aftermath of a tragic murder of a young woman in a rural community. Holm has great insight into human nature. After you read these stories, their heart will linger, and like the mountain in Li Po's poem, so does the landscape that she writes about.

Buy My Heart is a Mountain: Tales of Magic and the Land

Purchase a signed copy from Catherine Holm
US orders - $17.00 (includes shipping)

All International purchases please contact me for shipping rates.

 

 

Available now for purchase in bookstores and online

Purchase from: Amazon

Purchase from: Barnes and Noble

Purchase from: Holy Cow Press

 

Booksellers may order from Consortium book sales and distribution.

• Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, 2010-2011.
• Finalist for short story “Farm Woman,” in Minnesota magazine’s fiction contest, 2010.
• Honorable Mention for short story "Mau" in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2006.
• Honorable Mentions for short stories "Heart Armor," "Center of Her Core," and "Kali's Will" in 2006 and 2007 Writers of the Future Contest.
• Fantastic Companions (Julie E. Czerneda, editor), which includes my story "House of Cats," was a finalist for the Canadian Prix Aurora Award, and won the Silver Medal for Science Fiction and Fantasy from Foreword Magazine.
• Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Fellowship, 2006-2007.
• Minnesota State Arts Board Prose Fellowship, 2003-2004.
• Fiction Finalist, 2003-2004 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose.
• Regional adult winner, Voices for the Land Minnesota Essay Contest, 2000.
• Grant award from COMPAS/Blandin Foundation to carry out 1997 Art Corner project, promoting dialogue about the arts in rural communities.