Holland's books include Spectacle of the Body (Knopf) and What Begins with Bird (Fiction Collective Two).

Her writing has appeared in The American Voice, Ploughshares, Story Quarterly, Glimmer Train, The Quarterly, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Open City, Noon, and other publications.

She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2003. She has also received fellowships from the University of Florida, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Holland is an Associate Professor in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has also taught at Phillips Academy and the University of Florida.

She directs the Writers in the Schools Project in Amherst, Massachusetts.