Writer, poet, teacher, musician, and traveler Bill Holm, of Minneota, Minnesota, died on Wednesday, February 25, in Sioux Falls, S.D., after being stricken with pneumonia. He had published 16 books and many pamphlets, magazine articles, and other writings in the United States, and was a contributor to numerous publications in China, Sweden, Iceland, and elsewhere. His work was many times adapted for theater, radio, and TV productions, as well as for the many public lectures and concerts he presented in places as far-flung as Alaska and Madagascar.
About six and a half feet tall and red-haired, he once played the Giant in A production of Jack and the Beanstalk. Both before and after hIs death, he has been repeatedly referred to as a literary gianT. And for the magnitude of his enthusiasms and expressions, many of his friends and acquaintances considered him a gigantic personality with gigantic appetites for good art, public honesty, and social justice.
Born William Jon Holm on August 25, 1943, to William and Jona (Jonina Josephson) Holm, who were Swede Prairie farmers, he received his education in the Minneota schools, in the public library, and in the homes of his parents’ friends, wherever he could find books to devour. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1965, then did four years of graduate work at the University of Kansas before accepting his first full-time teaching job at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. After his mother’s death in 1975, he returned to Minnesota, and served as writer in residence for two years at Lakewood Community College.
In 1979, Bill was awarded a Fulbright Grant to teach American literature in Iceland,
returning in 1980 to teach at Southwest Minnesota StaTe University, from which he retired in 2007. His first two books, The Music of Failure and Boxelder Bug Variations, were publisHed in 1985.
In 1986, he was appointed to a faculty exchange position in Xi’an, China, and in 1992, he spent a term teaching literature in Wuhan, China. Other books followed nearly every year, including his Minneota memoir The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth (1996) and his most recent book, The Windows of Brimnes (Brimnes is the name of the cottage he purcHased in Hofsos, Iceland).
During these productive years, his work earned much recognition, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Bush Fellowships, a Minnesota Book Award, the Cobb Award for Service to Iceland, an honorary doctorate from Gustavus Adolphus College, and in 2008, the prestigious McKnight Distinguished Artist Award.
From 1966 to 1974, Bill was married to Judy Carey (of Willmar, Minnesota), who still resides in Hampton, Virginia. While in China in 1986-87, he met Marcella Brekken (of Audubon, Minnesota), who joined him in Minneota after her return from China. They were married in 2006.
Many of Bill’s students idolized him, not only for his literary prowess and his wide-ranging intellect, but also for his enthusiasms for books and music, and for his kindness and generosity.
Minneota neighbors recognized him as a person who was knowledgeable, entertaining, and supportive of the community. But his sense of community was broad, and readers and acquaintances all over Minnesota considered him one of their own. One commented online, ?