Holly Prado Papers, 1890-2019 (MSS 597)

SERIES 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS: General background on Holly Prado's life and career, including drafts of her resumes from the 1970s through late 1980s, brief biographies, a grant application, photographs, and newspaper clippings of articles about Prado.

SERIES 2) CORRESPONDENCE: Personal and professional correspondence. Given Prado's active involvement with poetry publications and acquaintance with other writers, professional and personal may overlap, with personal letters from friends occasionally including comments on Prado's work. Query letters to poetry journals and magazines are also present.

SERIES 3) WRITINGS: Primarily Prado's poetry, typically in typescript form, sometimes annotated. Some examples of Prado's earliest writing efforts from the 1950s and early 1960s are also present, including work Prado submitted for publication while still a student at Albion College and clippings of a column Prado wrote for the Albion College student newspaper. Arranged in six subseries: A) Childhood and Early Writings, B) Student Work, C) Poems, D) Poetry Collections, E) Poetry Miscellaneous, and F) Prose.

A) Childhood and Early Writings: Material Prado describes in a note as writing created "before I had any idea I could have a writing life." Includes poems from the early 1950s, short prose and a one act play.

B) Student Work: Primarily short prose written between 1954 and 1960, when Prado was a student at Albion College. Includes several clippings of her column for the Albion College student newspaper, The Pleiad, and a paper written for a Contemporary American Literature class taught by Peter Marin at CSU Los Angeles.

C) Poems: Individual poems and prose-poems, finished and unfinished, some in more than one version. Poems are typically typed, occasionally with handwritten annotations, and date from the late 1970s to early 1990s.

D) Poetry Collections: Groups of poems from Prado's files with a collective title. Some work is grouped thematically, some created as a poem cycle, and some grouped in collections intended for publication. Work dates from the 1970s to early 1990s.

E) Poetry Miscellaneous: Poems and prose-poems from Prado's files grouped to represent various date spans. The largest portion of material dates from the 1970s.

F) Prose: Several works of short prose, typed drafts and newspaper clippings of Prado's reviews for the Los Angeles Times, and a draft of her unpublished novel The Bright Obvious from 1989.

SERIES 4) NOTES: Chiefly consists of notepads which Prado and her husband, actor and poet Harry Northup, kept by their bedside between 1980 and 1995. On the notepads Prado and Northup shared thoughts, feelings, observations, and short messages. The subseries also includes a small amount of Prado's writing notes, notes from and about classes she attended in 1963 and 1964, and some working lists of material she had submitted for publication and information about sources for grants and awards.

SERIES 5) READINGS: Preparatory material and annotated poems used for live readings during the 1970s and 1980s.

SERIES 6) TEACHING MATERIALS: Preparatory material for writing workshops led by Prado, and courses for which Prado was a guest lecturer.

SERIES 7) CONFERENCES: Chiefly consists of notes and organizational material for conferences in which Prado participated. The largest amount of material relates to the Woman's Words Conference (1975), including promotional materials which Prado helped create and a packet of writings by various authors who participated in the conference.

SERIES 8) JOURNALS: Comprises the largest amount of material in the collection. Prado's personal journals date from 1960 through 1999. Influenced by Jungian psychology, Prado has described journals an important tool for "nourishing" her writing. They record thoughts, experiences, and dreams, and sometimes include drawings, photographs, or ephemera. Some journals deal specifically with trips Prado took, or dreams, and are typically handwritten.

SERIES 9) WRITINGS BY OTHERS & MISCELLANEOUS: A small selection of material, chiefly short prose, on subjects of interest to Prado.

Series 10) BIOGRAPHICAL: Biographical information about Holly Prado, including correspondence, ephemera, photographs, diplomas, grant applications, interview notes, and poems written about her by other poets.

Series 11) CORRESPONDENCE: Prado's correspondence with poets, publishers, and family members, arranged alphabetically. Prominent correspondents include Diane Wakoski, Alison Townsend, Harry Northup, Cecilia Woloch, and Robert Peters. Includes outgoing correspondence by both Holly Prado and Harry Northup, and correspondence with Prado's writing workshops and journal groups.

Series 12) WRITINGS. Arranged in four series: A) Notes, B) Poems, C) Poetry Collections, D) Prose and Journal Works.

A) Notes: Prado's notes from 1990-2018, including notes on possible publishers, notes on deities, and a list of loved ones for Día de los Muertos.

B) Poems: Drafts, notes, correspondence, and ephemera for Prado's published and unpublished poetry. Most of her drafts are typescript, then annotated and dated by hand. Arranged chronologically, with untitled poems at the end.

C) Poetry Collections: Drafts, manuscripts, notes, correspondence, ephemera, reviews, cover art, photographs, and promotional materials from Prado's published and unpublished works of poetry.

D) Prose and Journal Works: Drafts, notes, and correspondence for Prado's prose and prose poems, including her novels Gardens (1985) and The Bright Obvious, an untitled memoir from 1992, another personal essay written in 2010, blurbs for the publications of other writers, and an essay in honor of poets Philomene Long and John Thomas. Includes copies of Prado's work in other publications from 1973 through 2006.

Series 13) READINGS AND LECTURES: Drafts, notes, ephemera, correspondence, and photographs for poetry readings and talks given by Holly Prado. Includes Prado's teaching materials for the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California.

Series 14) JOURNALS: Prado's journals from 2000 to 2019, both handwritten and typescript, which were usually kept in three-ring binders. Prado recorded both her life experiences and dreams, and often included notes, correspondence, drafts, and ephemera in the binders. She sometimes removed or transcribed journal entries from the binders to work on as the basis for both her prose and poetry, keeping these notes and drafts separately in the front of the binders.

Series 15) CAHUENGA PRESS: Correspondence, ephemera, notes, photographs, promotional materials, articles of incorporation and by-laws for small press Cahuenga Press. Prado was one of the founding members of Cahuenga Press with Harry Northup, James Cushing, Phoebe MacAdams, Bill Mohr, and Cecilia Woloch.