I tell stories at the intersection of culture, consciousness, and underrepresented communities.
Subscribe to my Substack newsletter, read my blog on Good Beer Hunting, and check out my portfolio to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Defying the binary.
Hi, I’m Holly, a.k.a. Ferdinand (they/them). I’m a queer, trans, and ethically non-monogamous writer, artist, and wandering bard. My work explores the universal human drive to connect, transcend, and heal through collective rituals involving food, drink, and drugs, focused on the experiences of historically underrepresented people. Educated as an anthropologist, trained as a journalist, and born a seeker under a Sagittarius sun, I’m endlessly fascinated by people and the systems, substances, ceremonies, stories, and art we create to make meaning. I will bring my keen ability to observe, analyze, and synthesize seemingly disparate patterns, practices, and ideas to the Creative Research PhD program at the Transart Institute for Creative Research, where I have been accepted, beginning October 2024.
My writing has appeared in leading international publications, including The New York Times, Vice, Whetstone Magazine, the Wellcome Collection, Double Blind, Eater Seattle, Good Beer Hunting, SOURCED, Pellicle, LGBTQ Nation, CraftBeer.com, and Seattle Met, among other publications; I also co-authored for . I write a monthly column, Altered States, for Good Beer Hunting, which explores our relationship with consciousness-altering substances, and publish a monthly newsletter, The Both-Between, sharing stories from my personal and professional experience that bridge the sensory, scientific, and spiritual realms. I have also served as a collaborative writer and editor for book proposals and manuscripts as part of my freelance writing and editing business, Bard Creative Content Services.
I am now returning to my original medium, the theater, writing a play and calling in a co-created, immersive experience; I am also interested in resuming co-creating food and beverage education events, which I formerly hosted as part of Gilbert’s Cheese Experience. If you have a resonant background or feel called to collaborate, please drop me a line!
I am a native of Seattle, Washington, but currently live everywhere in the world. I have volunteered on farms in Crete and food businesses in Belfast; co-hosted cheese-pairing pop-ups with my best pal; worked as a barista and at bicycle shops; and spent seven years in Austin, Texas. When I’m not writing, I’m drawing, reading, cooking, exploring, running, biking, dancing, kundalini yoga-ing, listening to podcasts and lectures, or having great conversation with friends over a plate, plant, or pint.
Winner of the 2022 Curve Award for Emerging Journalists
Financial support and professional development cohort from the NLGJA: Association for LGBTQ Journalists and The Curve Foundation, given to writers whose work fosters fair and accurate coverage and elevates the voices of LGBTQIA+ women and nonbinary people
Winner of Best Travel Writing, 2021 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards in Beer Journalism
Recipient of the 2021 North American Guild of Beer Writers Diversity in Beer Writing Grant
The portal is the sensory.
Animist and nondual traditions attest that there is a sixth sense: the ability to detect the subtle realms of spirit. I propose that it is accessible through the other five, which William Blake called “the chief inlets of soul in this age.”
After all, there are only three universal human traits, according to renowned paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, and they predate our species: a complex language; collective spiritual rituals; and the use of consciousness-altering substances.
It seems we were made to transcend the sensory world to reach the sublime through the senses, then tell each other about it.
Trans-scend and include.
The prefix “trans” doesn’t mean to switch from one thing to another—it means to rise above. It’s a concept captured by Ken Wilber’s theory of Spiral Dynamics, a personal development framework that maps to the growth of civilizations, where we “transcend and include” the aspects of one stage as we move to the next. Our lives are microcosms of the macrocosm, and my personal journey and the lives of others I’ve encountered are not ones of leaving behind, but remembering.
Trans, as an identity, means different things to everyone. To me, it means to embody all of the gender identities prescribed and proscribed by the separation culture, yet fully identify with none. Psychologist Carl Jung identified the concept of archetypes, images and symbols that transcend cultures; I believe queer and trans people embody many, yet represent our own. We are mystics, storytellers, and shapeshifters, a necessary skill to navigate unpredictable environments and face threshold guardians, placing us at the vanguard for an era of unprecedented change. Our lives and bodies are the base material for transformation, continually dying to who we thought we were and being reborn.
My PhD work will explore Transness as an emerging archetype that expresses itself through non-ordinary conscious states including food, drink, and the psychedelic experience, all forms of Trans-substantiation, drawing from research, practice, and ethnographic studies in art, literature, performance, storytelling, and archetypal and integral theories as well as spiritual, nondual, ancestral, and Indigenous traditions to explore the question: Can we transcend and include our culture of consumption through that same mechanism?
Like Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism, Carl Jung described the alchemical text of “Liber Platonis quartorum,” which says the operator must put themselves in the work. My pracice is gonzo ethnography: a non-objective, participant observation bridging realms and communities that are normally disconnected. It’s a transmodern, neo-naturalist, mystical approach that trans-cends and includes geographic boundaries and planes of existence, from research and reporting, storytelling and performance, art and literary and culinary—exploring the concept that we all contain multitudes.
Photo Credit: Hackney Church Brew Co.
We learn who we are through the ways in which we nourish ourselves.
The things we eat and drink, and the ways we cultivate, create, and consume them, are powerful markers of identity. Not only do they teach us about ourselves, they also provide a portal to other places, people, and times.
Ask anyone involved with food and beverage anywhere in the world why they do it, and they all say the same thing: because it brings people together. I find fascinating stories of innovative producers and creators wherever I go, building instant bonds over bottles and cans, plates and plants.
The stories I share are enveloped in sight, sound, smell and flavor, enlivened by the experiences of the people behind them. I serve deep historical, personal, and sociological insights with an approach as warm and inviting as a steaming bowl of handmade pasta.
The Pacific Northwest is where I’m from, and it’s always in my heart: naturally abundant and breathtakingly beautiful, from soaring peaks to searing blue coastline, where food and beverage is a bounty of biodiversity in every bite. My second home is the UK, where vibrant communities of global misfits live loud and make art in every medium amidst bustling, foggy cityscapes where ancient forests stand sentinel. Both places, like anywhere, are ciphers for broader problems and solutions.
It’s all consciousness-altering.
I seek to unite the mind-altering substance communities and invite in the consciousness-curious. The worlds of food and beverage and psychedelics and plant medicine, respectively, are often siloed, with misunderstandings common on both sides. Yet they are more similar than many know. I believe that there are no bad substances: Anything can be a sacrament, just as anything can be abused; the keys are intention, awareness, and integration.
Through my work, I challenge consensus reality and explore that most ancient and universal human drive: to return to oneness with each other, the Earth, and what’s beyond through states of softened ego. Whether we get there through plants, prayer, or pints, it’s all consciousness-altering, and it’s all part of why we’re here.
Our relationships with these substances and practices inform and reflect individual and collective identities, inherently defying binary conceptions of nature and culture. Especially for underrepresented populations, these can provide pathways for awakening, helping us explore our true selves and heal from trauma—as long as they’re used intentionally and stewarded carefully, always defined by cultural and environmental reciprocity.
The future is one that celebrates difference.
Those who inhabit the in-between are the backbone of civilization. The age of the patriarchy is drawing to a close, and the way forward involves not only acknowledging underrepresented people, but celebrating them: dismantling systems, eliminating binary classifications, and rebuilding our structures to expand beyond the dualistic, Anglo-dominated, patriarchal hereto-norm.
That means uplifting the queers, women, and people of color; the artists, activists, seekers, and psychonauts; the chefs, brewers, makers, mystics, and paradigm-shifters in every space. Reporting from the front lines of the liminal, I investigate every alternative.
