Discipline: Literature

Holger Cahill

Discipline: Literature
MacDowell Fellowships: 1958
Holger Cahill (1887–1960) was a journalist, editor, and writer. Born Sveinn Kristjan Bjarnarson in St. Paul, MN., of Icelandic-born parents, he took the name Edgar Holger Cahill around 1919, while working as a newspaper reporter. After working at the Newark Museum (1922-1931) and at the Museum of Modern Art (1932-1935), Cahill was appointed national director of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (FAP). He married Dorothy Canning Miller, his second wife, in 1938. The FAP fell under the jurisdiction of Federal Project No. 1 of the WPA to aid unemployed artists. Cahill was director of the FAP for its entire existence (1935-1943). In 1943, he returned to New York, where he wrote Look South to the Polar Star (1947) and The Shadow of My Hand (1956), set in the Midwest of his youth.