Photo: Alexis Rhone Fancher
Holaday Mason’s As If Scattered is forthcoming from GiantClaw Press in October 2024—poems that “look unflinchingly at love, aging, & death with an unwaveringly empathic eye.”
Holaday is the author of five previous collections of poetry: The Weaver’s Body (Tebot Bach, 2019), named honorable mention for the 2014 Dorset Prize; The Red Bowl: A Fable in Poems (Red Hen Press, 2016); The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence (with Sarah Maclay, What Books Press, 2016); Dissolve (New Rivers Press, 2011); & Towards the Forest (New Rivers Press, 2007), as well as two chapbooks: Interlude (FarStarFire Press, 2001) & Light Spilling From its Own Cup (The Inevitable Press, 1999). Her chapbook Transparency was a finalist for the 2015 Snowbound Prize.
Nominated for the Pushcart prize multiple times, her poems appear in Hotel Amerika, Spillway, Solo, Pool, Poetry International, The Laurel Review & elsewhere. Her work has been anthologized in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence, 2018) Angle of Reflection (Arctos Press, 2017), Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2015), So Luminous the Wildflowers: An Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach, 2003), & the forthcoming A Shared Condition (Moon Tide Press, 2024).
Holaday is the poetry editor for Furious Pure Magazine, an online publication born out of a deep affinity for artists, with editor-in-chief DH Dowling. She was previously poetry editor of Mental Shoes Magazine, & co-edited the anthology Echo 681 (Beyond Baroque Books, 1998).
Holaday has been a transpersonal, analytic psychotherapist in private practice since 1993 (MFT 31549). Her work has been called “Shaman-analysis” by some, because she respectfully employs both classic Eurocentric methods of uncovering & transforming unconscious material (somskaras) & shadows with older earth based wisdoms & eastern philosophies in the work of deep soul excavation. In addition to her private practice work, she leads generative therapeutic writing workshops that focus on mining the imaginal & inner worlds in the combined service of healing ourselves & making art.
As a creator of fine art images & portraits, Holaday’s photography is uninterested in certain & exact arrangements that may please, beckon, or seduce. Instead, images enter the energy field with the subjects, allowing events to unfold as a living dance of creativity occurring between the participants. Her Urn Series & Fairytale Series appeared in a solo show in Venice, CA in 2016.
Holaday is a co-founding member of the multi-disciplinary Wild Orchid Collective where she collaborates with artists in the fields of poetry, photography, video, sound recordings, collage & painting.
She lives in Venice with a mean-ass cat named Ms. T.T. (AKA Ms. Twirly Tail), a big ol’ dog named Chewie & her husband, the musician & educator Adrian Baer.
“The poems here are raw yet elegant. They are erotic, direct, detailed, musical and carry with them moments of joyful experience, but also the desolate fears, that for all of us, lurk ahead.”
—Susan Terris, author of Memos