"[1] 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.
[3] She records the often harsh details of life in the distant or recent past and her depiction of it involves considerable research.
While she claims not to choose fictional settings based on their infrequent usage by other writers, she has said, "I wouldn't dare do the Civil War, because it's so well known, every damn detail, it would be so stifling.
Paula Mendoza, an ex-prisoner from anarchist Earth, becomes a diplomat and the lover of one of the Styth, a variant human subspecies who live in floating cities.
[4] During the late 1990s, Publishers Weekly described Holland as a "bohemian den mother" and historical novelist who had written 24 books.
For ten years, Holland taught two three-hour creative writing classes a week at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California.