My parents always joked that doing the whole alliteration thing by naming me Robin Rivers meant I'd have to do something artistic. They were right, but what they didn't know was that I'd also be listening to ancestors, finding myself as a teller of lost stories.
I've always been drawn to those that exist at the edges of understanding—the forgotten places where the old ones still speak if you know how to listen. There's something compelling about the spaces where official history ends and deeper truths begin. These become my starting points as I follow the guidance that comes through dreams, deep listening, and conversations with spirits of place.
That journey began with The Sibylline Chronicles and my novel, Woman On The Wall—works that emerged from mystical encounters I was only beginning to understand.
As my practice expanded to include mixed media and photography, the old ones guided me deeper into my Polish, French, and Canadian heritage. I discovered connections between my family lines that went beyond genealogy—ancestral voices calling me to reclaim stories. Working with found photography, antique real photo postcards, and historical archives, I began to understand that what's missing from public records isn't accidental. War, marginalization, and systematic erasure create gaps that only spirit guidance can bridge. So, I listen and create from that place.
Today, my work centers on letting the forgotten ones tell their stories through me, bringing back powerful magic and old ways.
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.
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.
