Holly Schwartztol

Holly Schwartztol (Letters) - Holly W. Schwartztol is a poet, a novelist, a retired psychologist, a teacher and a spiritual medium. She grew up in New York City. Her father, James A. Wechsler was a renowned journalist and her mother was a copyright attorney. Holly graduated from the Dalton School in 1964 and Finch College in 1968. She holds a Masters in Psychology from C.W. Post College and a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Miami. Holly was a school psychologist in Dade County for eleven years and she had a private practice for thirty years. In the mid-nineties, she and a colleague opened a holistic center in Miami called MIEL. She was president of many professional organizations, including the Dade County Psychological Association (1988) and the Florida Society of Clinical Hypnosis (2001) and several others. Holly and her parents wrote a book called In a Darkness which chronicled the mental illness and eventual suicide of her brother Michael. The first edition was published in 1972 and the second edition in 1988. When Holly was in her fifties, her creative writing began to emerge more fully. She has published three novels since 2005: (Sherry and the Unseen World, What We Tell (2012) and Coming Around Again (2019). Holly’s poetry has placed in the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society writing competition for several years. She has published two volumes of poetry: Along My Garden Path: Poems on the Rhythms of Life (2020) and Loves of My Life(2025)., Holly’s fictional characters take the lead and guide her to write the story. She often writes about the metaphysical and has become a medium herself in recent years. Her poems nearly fall out of her; rarely does she sit down to “write a poem”. She’s tapped by her muse and must write no matter where she is at any time of day or night. Holly is a past president of the South Florida Writers Association (SWFA). She likes to encourage aspiring writers and teaches memoir writing both on line and in person. Holly’s psychology and spiritual studies inform her writing about the intricacies of Human relationships and the continuation of consciousness.

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