I've always been drawn to different forms of storytelling, particularly to the what-ifs and forgotten places that exist at the edges of our understanding. There's something compelling about a good missing link—those spaces where folklore reveals threads of truth and identity. These details become my starting points as I explore which stories survive and how they are preserved.
That journey began with The Sibylline Chronicles and my novel, Woman On The Wall.
As my work expanded to include mixed media and photography, I wanted to layer in aspects of my Polish, French, and Canadian heritage. I discovered deep connections between my family lines, the statelessness of my Polish ancestors, and the fragile nature of the family archives I now caretake. This lead me to begin working with found photography alongside antique real photo postcards and open-access archival historical photography. I started to consider what is missing from public archives and how forces such as war and marginalization create those gaps.
Today, my storytelling centers on memory reconstruction as a way of recovering and restoring lost pieces of cultural identity, bringing them back into circulation as a part of the collective memory.
Learn more about my process: How I source and care for historical materials → Sources
Interested in my exhibitions and publications? Click to view my CV.
Born in the mist of Niagara Falls, NY, I grew up in Colorado at the base of the Rocky Mountains. After I fell in love with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese, my Grade 10 English teacher suggested I take up writing as a career.
So I did.
I ran copy from the newsroom of my hometown daily newspaper to paste-up on the swing shift to put myself through university. Since then, I’ve written for daily newspapers, magazines, and online publications across North America.
I cut my teeth as a storyteller on the front lines of newspapers across North America. In 1996, I became the youngest recipient of the National (US) Mental Health Association Media Award for a series in which I spent six months detailing the lives of three people with schizophrenia after the state of Illinois shut down its facilities. That series also earned The Golden Bell Award for Feature Writing (Illinois) as well as a top prize for feature writing with the Illinois Associated Press Association. In the years after, I earned numerous Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists awards for news writing in the United States.
Journalism was one hard-core training ground, but it ultimately did not suit my sensibilities. An ill-advised stint covering crime for a newspaper in the Pacific Northwest prompted my departure. I left journalism to become a different kind of storyteller.
After agreeing to marry a Canadian guy on our second date, I immigrated to Canada.
We built our life in a tiny house on Vancouver Island. There, where rain falls an average of three hundred days a year, I found myself a young mother in an isolated town. I longed for ways to create a magical life for my kids, find my voice, and build community.
That first winter, in the midst of me suffering a rather serious bout of depression, my husband bought me my first professional-grade camera.
"Go find the beauty in the gray," he told me.
I spent the next years with that camera around my neck. My daughters and I explored the woods and marshes. There, I found my voice through visual storytelling and writing. I connected to it through myths and folk tales, and built my first business.
I served as the publisher for Our Big Earth Media Co., creating content and nature experiences for families on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia. We also hosted the annual 30-Day Local Food Challenge. Through that, I worked with farmers, food producers, and ranchers across the Comox Valley to tell their stories.
In 2012, I sold the business in search of adventure. Our wee family drove across Canada and spent a year in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I documented the journey in a photo essay entitled From The Passenger Side. That year in Halifax transformed the way I told stories. It also sparked another phase of my life.
After returning to B.C. and settling in Vancouver, I became a weekly guest on Roundhouse Radio. That incredible community talk radio project has now ended. There, of course, I talked about storytelling.
Seeing a gap in the local offerings, I established Quill Academy of Creative Writing. Teaching was a natural fit. Since then, my team has worked with hundreds of students to help them discover their writing voice and support their skill development. I learn as much from them as hopefully they do from me. I now teach more than 20 classes every week and love every minute of it.
When I'm not teaching, you’ll find me up at the crack of dawn, holed up in my studio, writing or making art, and polishing off a pot of coffee in the process!
I live and work in Vancouver, Canada—on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. This includes the territories of the xÊ·məθkwÉ™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and SÉ™lÌ“ÃlwÉ™taÊ”/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. My husband, daughters, and sphynx cat Hypatia tolerate me most of the time.
On social media and my Substack, I share updates on travel, research, my latest WIP, and life.
READ MY BOOKRobin's work is hard to resist. She blends historical facts, mysticism, feminine force, and engaging characters to invoke stories that thrill and entertain the reader from start to finish.
