Holly George-Warren

Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, book packager, producer, and music consultant. She is the author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: The First 25 Years (HarperCollins, Sept. 2009), Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West (Readers Digest Books, 2002), Punk 365 (Abrams, 2007), Grateful Dead 365 (Abrams, 2008); and the children's books Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), and The Cowgirl Way (Houghton Mifflin, July 2010). She has cowritten several books including The Road to Woodstock (with Michael Lang, Ecco, July 2009), How the West Was Worn (Abrams, 2001), The Working Woman's Guide to Managing Stress (Prentice-Hall, 1994), and Musicians in Tune: 75 Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process (Fireside, 1992). She is currently writing the biography of Alex Chilton, to be published by Viking Press in 2012.

Her writing appears in the books Will The Circle Be Unbroken; Classic Country; The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock; Rock, She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, Rap, and Jazz; The Encyclopedia of Country Music; Country on Compact Disc; The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll; and The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide, among other anthologies. She also has written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Redbook, More, Entertainment Weekly, MOJO, Harp, the Journal of Country Music, the Oxford American, Paper, Time Out, Tracks, Paste, Relix, Cowboys & Indians, Texas Music, Men's Journal, Country Music, Cowboys and Indians, American Cowboy, and No Depression. She currently writes a monthly music column for More Magazine. She has contributed liner notes to numerous anthologies and box sets, issued by Rhino, Warner Bros., Sony/​Legacy, Capitol, Universal, and BMG, among others. Her essay for the Gram Parsons anthology Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels (Rhino) won the 2002 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in liner notes.


She has served as editor and/​or packager of numerous books. She is the editor of The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (Hyperion, 1999), Farm Aid: A Song For America (Rodale, 2005); and Stairway to Heaven: The Final Resting Places of Rock Legends (Wenner Books/​Hyperion, 2005). In addition to this, she is the coeditor of The Appalachians: America's First and Last Frontier (Villard, 2004); Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey (HarperCollins 2003); American Roots Music (Abrams, 2001); The Rolling Stone Album Guide (Random House); The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (Random House), Rolling Stone: The Seventies (Little Brown), and two editions of The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster), for which she won a 1996 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. As Editor of Rolling Stone Press from 1993-2001, she created more than forty books, including the New York Times bestseller, Garcia (Little Brown), and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award winner Images of Rock & Roll (Little Brown). In 2003, she served as music editor to the first-ever Zagat's survey of the top 1000 albums of all time. She has edited and packaged the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame annual induction book every year since 1995.


George-Warren received a Grammy nomination (for Best Historical Recording) in 2001 for coproducing Rhino's five-CD box set, R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Century of Women in Music. She also coproduced the three-CD set The Rolling Stone Women in Rock Collection (Razor & Tie) and a series of CDs with the Lifetime network. In addition, she has served as an archivist/​curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and The GRAMMY Museum.


She has served as a consultant, writer, and/​or lecturer on Western wear at several museums, including the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, the Autry Museum of the American West, the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. She teaches Arts Journalism at the State University of New York in New Paltz, NY and has lectured at Cornell, Penn, MTSU and CUNY, among other universities.


George-Warren has appeared on numerous television programs on various networks to discuss music, pop culture, and Western Americana including CBS Saturday Morning, MTV, VH1, CMT, PBS, and NBC, and at such book festivals as the Southern Festival of Books, the Texas Book Festival, and the Northwest Festival of Books, and conferences like SXSW, the International Country Music Conference, the Ponderosa Stomp, and the EMP Pop Music Conference. She has also served as a consultant to several documentary films, including the Emmy-nominated Woodstock: Now & Then and Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly.