Spencer Holst (July 7, 1926 – November 23, 2001) was an American writer and
storyteller.
Although he published several collections of stories and volumes of translations, Holst was known primarily for the captivating live performances of his work that he regularly conducted, particularly in the
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
area, in a distinctive mellifluous, rhythmically cadenced voice. In his heyday he was often heard on New York's listener-sponsored radio station,
WBAI.
For many years until his death, he lived at Westbeth Artists Housing in NYC. In addition to presenting readings there, he exhibited his watercolour paintings, many based on invented calligraphic motifs. The paintings were often shown with lengthy titles attached, some were small stories in themselves.
The typical Holst story might be a gentle but a twisted fable,
such as the tale of a frog who, having become addicted to morphine during a laboratory experiment, was rejected by the woman whose kiss transformed him back into a prince because, after all, he was only a junkie. Holst also wrote a number of paragraph-length prose pieces, which distilled a brief scene or anecdote into a glimmering, evanescent
koan
A (; , ; ko, 화두, ; vi, công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.
Etymology
The Japanese term is the Sino-J ...
.
Selected works
*''Thirteen Essays / Sixty Drawings'' (1960)
elf Published
An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes " ...
by Spencer Holst and drawings by Beatte Wheeler
*''On Demons'' (chapbook) (1970)
*''The Language of Cats and Other Stories'' (1971)
*''Spencer Holst Stories'' (1976) Winner of the Rosenthal Literary Award by the American Academy of Arts & Letters
*''Something to Read to Someone/16 Drawings'' (with Beate Wheeler) (1980)
*''The Zebra Storyteller'' (1993)
*''Brilliant Silence'' (2000)
References
External links
Spencer Holst archive at University of Texas, El Paso''Searching for Spencer Holst'' by Wendy Freedman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holst, Spencer
20th-century American painters
American male painters
American performance artists
20th-century American short story writers
American storytellers
Radio personalities from New York City
1926 births
2001 deaths
Painters from New York City
20th-century American male artists