Holly Starley
Interested in 1:1 creative coaching or individualized writing mentorship? Book a free 15-minute consult with Holly to discuss.​​
Author, editor, teacher, nomad Holly Starley loves the wild and to share the joy of revision, which is to say, writing. She’s enjoyed a two-decade career as a freelance editor and loves helping authors bring their visions to the page. An award-winning journalist, she’s been recognized for coverage of legal and government affairs and in-depth investigative reporting. She’s a founding member of KZAA lp, a low-power bilingual radio station and served for seven years as managing editor of a nonprofit mini-mag, Quick Release, for which she received the Velo Wings Award, “Extraordinary Women Giving Flight to Cycling Programs.” Her story "You Can't Fight the Wind" will feature in the forthcoming anthology 30 Journeys, and her essay, "Just Jump" was a finalist in the Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Memoirist, Apocrypha, 5 o’Clock Somewhere, Tom Fish Is Away, and elsewhere. Read her tales from a solo nomadic life and essays on living with a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease on her best-selling Substack The Rolling Desk.
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Holly’s courses and one-on-one work with authors center writers as their own best first editors and focuses on helping them center their work in the world. She believes we each have unique storytelling traditions to draw from, that revision can be expansive and freeing, and that learning how to mold our work from draft to polish is how we trust our own authority and guide ourselves to the work of our dreams.
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A veteran writer and editor, Holly’s Caravan offerings include single-session writing and editing courses and weekend bootcamps. She also offers 1:1: services, including essay editing “coaching” / co-editing, manuscript line editing, manuscript developmental editing, and college essay writing coaching.
Holly on the roads she rolls along
In summer 2019, I bought a hollowed-out van I called Ruby. For four + years, Ruby van Jangles and I explored the roads of the western United States from the southern tip of Arizona up through the Canada Yukon and up into northern Alaska. In 2024, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of the spine called ankylosing spondylitis. Now I roll in a van called Vivian van Gogh. Ruby wasn't my first nomadic period, just my longest. My travels and everyone I meet and connect with on the roads I roll along, both real and metaphorical, inform my writing, my teaching, my one:one work with authors, and my editing.
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I'm always looking for new and exciting opportunities. Let's connect.