I've always been a storyteller, drawn to the what-ifs and forgotten places that exist in the margins of our understanding. There's something magnetic about a good missing link—those spaces where folklore meets myth, where lost legends whisper their secrets. These tiny, odd details become my starting points, and I find myself riding the edges between dark and light, exploring worlds we can't or choose not to see but feel and experience constantly.
This fascination has led me to spend much of my life digging through the intersections of spirit, science, and society, examining which stories survive and understanding the means by which they are preserved. The journey began with The Sibylline Chronicles, a project that opened up entirely new pathways of exploration for me.
Today, Studio Albertine serves as the home for this ongoing work, where I continue exploring the gaps in time through both visual art and writing, seeking to illuminate those liminal spaces where forgotten narratives still pulse with life.
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!
Interested in my exhibitions and publications? Click to view my CV.
I love collaborating with other artists. In 2025, artist Kelly Isaak and I were chosen for the juried narrative art show Ghost Stories YYC. As an artist/author team, we're creating a cohesive narrative art piece for the show, which opened in October 2025 at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.
As a writer, I have worked under the guidance of Canadian developmental editor Claire Mulligan and trained with Welsh mythologist Angharad Wynne. As an artist, I have trained with Canadian collage artist Lisa Pijuan-Nomura, French collage artist Twiggy Boyer and Brazilian collage artist Juliana Naufel.
I also have had the opportunity to participate in international artist residencies. In 2024, I received the Denis Didierot writer-in-residence fellowship to the Château d’Orquevaux artists’ colony in northeastern France. In 2025, I was accepted for the Fall cohort of the as a part of the Photo Trouvée Fall Virtual Artist Residency. In 2026, I will be an Artist In Residence at Château Saint-Pierre de Mejans in the Luberon region of France.
I live and work in Vancouver, Canada—on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. This includes the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/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.
