by Writing Workshops Staff
3 days ago
When The Masters Review editors described Pauline Holdsworth's short story "Watch Her Go" as "an unusual and beautiful coming-of-age story," they captured something essential about her work: the ability to transform familiar territory into something wholly unexpected. Her story, now featured in the prestigious New Voices section, follows a protagonist whose Illusions—allegorical, metaphorical representations of the things she thought she understood—fall away as she navigates a troubling relationship with her teacher, leaving her "vulnerable and unprotected."
It's the kind of fiction that lingers. And it's exactly the sort of bold, imaginative work that emerges when a writer commits to exploring the edges of what storytelling can do.
Pauline is a queer writer and public radio producer who grew up in central Pennsylvania and now makes her home in Toronto, Canada. Her fiction has appeared in an impressive roster of literary venues, including Black Warrior Review, Best Small Fictions 2024, The Malahat Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She brings a radio producer's ear for rhythm and pacing to her prose, crafting sentences that move with quiet precision before delivering their emotional punch.
At WritingWorkshops.com, Pauline enrolled in The Modern Gothic: Making Haunted Fictions for the 21st Century Zoom Seminar with Amber Sparks, a course designed to help writers use the tricks, conventions, and tools that masters from Henry James to Shirley Jackson made standard while creating something fresh and thoroughly modern. Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You: Revenges and Other Stories and the novel Happy People Don't Live Here, brings her expertise in speculative and genre-bending fiction to help writers push beyond conventional boundaries.
The Masters Review occupies a vital space in contemporary publishing. Their mission centers on supporting emerging writers, and their New Voices section showcases carefully curated work that represents the best of contemporary short-form fiction. For Pauline's story to earn a place alongside such distinguished company speaks to both her talent and her willingness to take creative risks—to write the strange, allegorical, unsettling stories that demand attention.
What makes Pauline's trajectory particularly inspiring is how she balances multiple creative identities. As a public radio producer, she understands the power of voice and timing; as a fiction writer, she translates those instincts onto the page. Her inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2024 alongside her appearance in The Masters Review suggests a writer whose work resonates with editors across the literary landscape.
We're proud to count Pauline Holdsworth among our WritingWorkshops.com alumni and excited to watch her continued rise. With the kind of imaginative vision that transforms coming-of-age stories into something haunted and wholly original, she's a writer whose name we expect to see again and again.
Ready to write your own haunted fictions? Explore our online creative writing workshops and discover how expert instruction from acclaimed authors like Amber Sparks can help you push your writing into bold new territory. Join a community of writers committed to craft—and start your own success story today.
