Zachary Holt, student author, is inspired by the written word and inspires others

Zachary Holt, a University of Maine at Farmington senior majoring in Creative Writing and English, didn’t plan on attending college. But all that changed when he came to visit UMF with a friend on accepted student day, and he was inspired by the place and the future UMF could offer.

A native Mainer from the small town of Carroll in Penobscot County, population 138, he had fallen in love with the world of writing with the first poem he wrote for his high school freshman English class.  Now in his fourth year at Farmington, Holt is a leader with UMF’s Longfellow Young Writers Camp, a week-long summer camp created to inspire young high school writers through creative workshops, mentorship and a love of language and storytelling.

His Longfellow role has advanced so that he now serves as both a camp counselor and the camp’s marketing director. In his marketing role, Holt reaches out to Maine high schools to offer mini Creative Writing workshops so students can learn about the Longfellow opportunities available to work with experts in all genres and be inspired to generate new writing for themselves.

Throughout his time at UMF, Creative Writing has touched many of Holt’s college experiences. In his sophomore year he became a published author with “A Poet in Three Parts”, a chapbook published by Bottlecap Press. His writing genre has grown from poetry to nonfiction and screen writing and, according to his publisher, he takes the beauty and isolation of the Maine woods and uses it as inspiration in much of his work.

In addition to his work with Longfellow, he is a member of Sigma Tau Delta, the UMF campus chapter of the International English Honor Society that offers academic conferences, publication opportunities and exclusive scholarships to high achieving students.

At last year’s university-wide Symposium, Holt received the UMF Visio Roughton Scholarship, an award established at UMF to honor the memory of a UMF student and double major in Creative Writing and English.

Rounding out his academic pursuits, Holt is also minoring in Film Studies and Video Game Studies.

He is currently the vice president of the UMF Film Club where students write, workshop, produce and screen student made short films and documentaries.

He has worked on campus as a peer educator for counseling and a technical assistant in the Digital Humanities & Video Games Studies Lab. He also served an internship with “The River” the online UMF Sandy River Review, a nationally recognized journal that features contemporary fiction, poetry and nonfiction.

In his own words, Holt says that while everyone has the capacity to write, the writer is compelled to choose the written word to express themselves. They use writing to translate what they see and feel and by doing so they allow others to experience it.

Holt plans on attending graduate school to earn a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and hopes to share the experience he’s been gifted with students of his own.