Cecelia Holland

Cecelia Holland (born December 31, 1943) is an American historical novelist.

Early life and education Holland was born December 31, 1943, in Henderson, Nevada. She grew up in Metuchen, New Jersey, where she started writing at age 12, recording the stories she made up for her own entertainment. From the beginning, she focused on history because "being twelve, I had precious few stories of my own. History seemed to me then, as it still does, an endless fund of material."

Holland attended Pennsylvania State University for a year, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965 from Connecticut College, where she took a course in creative writing and was encouraged by poet William Meredith and short story writer David Jackson. Jackson took a novel Holland wrote for his seminar to an editor at Atheneum, and her first novel, The Firedrake, was published in 1966. She had just dropped out of graduate school at Columbia University to work as a clerk at Brentano's in Manhattan. Holland has been a full-time professional writer ever since. The Firedrake was the fourth novel she had written, but was the first published; Jerusalem is the final, mature version of one of these earlier ones. Pieces of the other two also have made their way into her published work.