Holly Gleason Interview
Holly Gleason is a Nashville-based writer and artist development consultant. She's written for countless publications, and was recently named Entertainment Journalist of the Year at the Southern California Journalism Awards. Her new book is Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters with John Prine. It collects Prine, in his own words, across a variety of different formats.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I was a championship golfer as a kid, and I started writing about golf. A hand injury ankled my college golf career, but having met Vince Gill as a high school senior – looking for someone to play golf with, I kidnapped him and interviewed him for the St Andrews’ Bagpiper. The last day we played golf, he made the outlandish suggestion: “You should write about music.”
That seemed crazy. I was never going to know another famous person, but I loved music, and I had time on my hands. Suddenly writing for the Rollins Sandspur turned into the University Of Miami Hurricane, In Record Timez (yes, with a “Z”), and then being the South Florida correspondent for touring trade Performance. Rock & Soul, Black Miami Weekly, Trouser Press and the Cleveland Plain Dealer followed.