Hollie Dugas

13 Life Lessons from Holden Caufield

Hollie Dugas

1. Song lyrics are better when you mishear them. 2. There isn’t a catcher’s mitt in the world big enough. 3. Nobody ever got nowhere without a void. 4. Who wants flowers when they’re dead? 5. Stuff you’d rather not say is always the stuff worth saying. 6. A red hunting hat will intimidate the dickens out of people. 7. This world is full of creeps and morons. 8. This planet is godforsaken; romanticize everything. 9. Nothing’s ever all true. 10. Laugh like the dickens whenever you can. 11. Trouble is, no one will ever truly hear you. 12. I don’t know what I mean by that—but I mean it. 13. Did I tell you about the ducks, yet?

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been selected to be included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Redivider, Porter House Review, Pembroke, Salamander, Poet Lore, Watershed Review, Mud Season Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Chiron Review, Louisiana Literature, and CALYX. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, in addition to, the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. Hollie has been a finalist twice for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue’s Annual Contest, and has received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Recently, Hollie has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. She is currently a member on the editorial board for Off the Coast.