Reinhorn, Holiday

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Reinhorn, Holiday

PERSONAL: Daughter of a military dentist and middle school teacher; married Rainn Wilson; children: Walter. Education: University of Iowa, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Free Press, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Co-producer, with Eva Ilona Brzeski, of movie Last Seen. Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow, Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best Books of 2005 selection, San Francisco Chronicle, for Big Cats: Stories; Pushcart Prize honorable mention, 2005, for "Get Away from Me, David"; Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction; Tennessee Williams Scholar, Sewanee Writers Conference; Production Grant, Arthur Jerome Foundation.

WRITINGS:

Big Cats: Stories, Free Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Tin House, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and Northwest Review.

WORK IN PROGRESS: "Gabe," This Is Not Chick Lit, edited by Elizabeth Merrick, Random House; Fuck You, a screenplay.

SIDELIGHTS: A graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, Holiday Reinhorn published her first collection of short stories, Big Cats: Stories, in 2005. When asked by Gendy Alimurung in L.A. Weekly online whether her work was autobiographical, Reinhorn explained that she spent much of her childhood traveling the world because her father was in the military. That fact made her something of a "voyeur" of other people's lives. "The act of wishing to inhabit a place is more provocative in my work than actually being there," she commented. "A lot of the characters want to inhabit a place very badly and can't. And in that way it is autobiographical."

The title story in Big Cats features two fourteen-year-old girls who engage in a bitter battle in front of the lion cage at a zoo. Other tales revolve around lonely adults who search fruitlessly for connection with others—in some cases family, in others inappropriate strangers. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that the "tight and uncontrived stories bring authentic characters to vivid life." In Kirkus Reviews, a contributor deemed the collection to be an "accomplished" work and praised Reinhorn's "acute ear for the vernacular and fresh take on the human condition."