Holiday Reinhorn: Writer who abandoned her religion because of her husband
Holiday Reinhorn is an American writer whose stories have made it to some of the biggest literary magazines in America. Following the publication of her interesting short stories, she gained fame and stepped into the limelight.
Asides from her career as a writer, she is also famous for being the wife of talented actor, writer, and filmmaker Rainn Wilson. Wilson stands out as one Hollywood star who is particular about his religion. Despite not compelling his wife to convert to his religion, Reinhorn converted years into their marriage.
Fans have wondered what made her convert. So, here is all you need to know about Holiday Reinhorn, who left her religion for love.
Holiday Reinhorn biography
Born in 1964, Holiday Reinhorn hails from Portland, Oregon, where she spent her formative years. After she graduated from high school, Reinhorn attended a college in Boulder, Colorado, in 1983. A year after enrolling at the college, she dropped out and left school for a while.
Reinhorn left her studies for a year before she enrolled at the University of Washington, Seattle in the United States. There she was a theatre student in 1985.
In 1995, when she realised that she had a passion for writing, not acting, Reinhorn took part in the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. This writing programme was the act that paved her way to success. She subsequently obtained a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.
In 1999, Reinhorn bagged a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin.
While at the university for both her undergraduate and post-graduate studies, Reinhorn published numerous short stories. She also got a certificate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and made her mark in the literary world with her book, Big Cats, which was released by Free Press in 2005.
Aside from being a writer, Reinhorn has also taught communities and universities, including at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and LitReactor.
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Holiday Reinhorn career
As earlier mentioned, Reinhorn discovered while studying at the university that acting on the big stage or screen was not her calling and she delved into writing.
At the University of Wisconsin, where she bagged a fellowship, Reinhorn wrote short stories and received a stipend from the institution.
On July 6, 2005, Reinhorn released her first book, a collection entitled, Big Cats: Stories.
The novel was met with widespread acclaim and garnered glowing reviews from the likes of the Seattle Times, Post Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly.
John Freeman of The Seattle Times described Reinhorn’s Big Cats as a book that therapists would have a diagnostic field day with and praised the author for spinning a tale so strange and singular that readers should be cautious of.
“Therapists would have a diagnostic field day with the cast of Holiday Reinhorn’s debut story collection, ‘Big Cats’. Some of the characters conjured here have anger-management issues. Others are too sizzled by grief to see straight. All of them have substance abuse lurking in their background.
“This is a minor gaffe, however, in a very promising debut. For when Reinhorn is on — which is most of the time — she can spin a tale so strange and singular, it has its magnetic warble. Were it not for its cutesy title, the lead story would be a pitch-perfect riff on the casual brutality of our teenage years,” Freeman wrote.
According to Kirkus Review, each piece of the Big Cats collection is described as raucous and full of bristling energy.
“But each of these pieces is distinguished by Reinhorn’s acute ear for the vernacular and fresh take on the human condition. Raucous and full of bristling energy,” the publication declared.
Publishers Weekly, on its part, gave a thorough yet concise breakdown of the entire debut collection outlining Reinhorn’s talent and the uniqueness of each piece.
The publication wrote: “In the title story of this lively, honest debut collection set in California and Oregon, two 14-year-old girls, concessions workers at a zoo, get into a fistfight outside the lions’ cage. The girls aren’t ‘big’ cats yet, but they’re trying, and Reinhorn captures their adolescent ebullience and sexual bravado. The adults in the remaining stories are often profoundly lonely—hungering for connection, they take or conjure it where they can.”
Following the success of this interesting collection, it even made it to the top of Powell’s bestseller list sitting comfortably at number 15.
With her rise up the success ladder, Reinhorn was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the anthology ‘Best New American Voices’ and she won a Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction.
Like most writers whose stories make it to the big screen, Reinhorn adapted one of her short stories into the screenplay of the movie Last Seen (2002). Years later, in 2017, a short film, entitled: PUSH, was released based on another of her stories.
Reinhorn’s writings have been featured in various literary publications, including Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Gulf Coast, among others.
Holiday Reinhorn books
Reinhorn’s published books include:
- Big Cats
- Ploughshares at Emerson College
- Emmanuel
- Zoetrope: All-Story
Holiday Reinhorn movies
According to IMBd, Reinhorn movies in which her stories have been used include:
- Last Seen (2002)
- PUSH (2017)
- Architectural Digest (2010)
Holiday Reinhorn’s net worth
Reinhorn’s net worth has been estimated to be $300,000, according to media reports. Her wealth comes from her profession as a writer.
Holiday Reinhorn family
Reinhorn’s family set the tone for her kind of books and stories. Her mother was a schoolteacher while her father served in the U.S. Army as a dentist. After her father’s graduation, he enlisted in the United States Army and served at Kuma Station in Japan.
As a result of her father’s profession, Reinhorn lived all over Asia in countries like Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand.
Six years after Reinhorn was born, in 1970, her parents welcomed a son, giving the writer a younger brother. In 1971, they moved back to the United States.
Regarding her personal life, Reinhorn met the love of her life, Rainn Wilson, while at the university.
Wilson is an American podcaster, actor, comedian, writer, producer and director. He is famous for his role as “Dwight Schrute” on the NBC sitcom The Office. For this role, he earned three Emmy Award nominations for “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series”.
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Other films he has acted in include The Rocker (2008), Super (2010), and The Boy (2015). Wilson has also done voiceovers for characters such as “Lex Luthor” in the DC Animated Movie Universe and “Gargamel” in Smurfs: The Lost Village.
The couple both attended the University of Washington. Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir, The Bassoon King: Art, Idiocy, and Other Sordid Tales from the Band Room, that Reinhorn’s beauty rendered him speechless and he knew it was love at first sight.
“I don’t believe in love at first right — it simply doesn’t make sense — but that’s what happened to me on that night,” Wilson said.
On June 30, 1995, the couple tied the knot. They had a Baha’i ceremony on the Kalama River near Mount St. Helens in Washington. Their marriage ceremony was a unique one as guests were ushered to their seats with bagpipers playing “Amazing Grace”. Reinhorn wore a mini dress paired with go-go boots and she and her husband concluded their wedding by jumping into the river.
Wilson also wrote that his marriage was “…a bizarre and profound expression of our love. And a h–l of a lot of fun”.
Conceiving was not an easy thing for Reinhorn and Wilson as they tried for several years to have a child.
It was in 2004, that they gave birth to their son, Walter McKenzie Wilson, who they consider a miracle.
Reinhorn’s husband, Wilson, comes from a family of Baha’i adherents. Although Wilson said he would not force his wife to convert to his religion, after the birth of their son, in 2004, she converted.
Speaking about his wife, Wilson said, “She wasn’t a Baha’i when we got married in a Baha’i ceremony almost 12 years ago. I never pressured her to join the faith. But she started attending Ruhi (a curriculum based on the Baha’i Writings) classes in the L.A. area and became interested. And the birth of our son, Walter, now 2 1/2, was such a miracle that she found herself saying prayers and spiritually connecting to the faith. She became a Baha’i in 2004.”
According to People, Reinhorn and her family reside in a 1974 Spanish-style hacienda home in Southern California.
Reinhorn and Wilson have been married for nearly 30 years and they are still standing strong.
Holiday Reinhorn age
Holiday Reinhorn was born on March 12, 1964. She is 59 years old, as of 2023.
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