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Bio

(in a nutshell)

Robyn Hood Black makes poems and art in the South Carolina mountains. Her poetry appears in several anthologies as well as in leading haiku journals. She enjoys exploring the creative life with readers, writers, and artists of all ages.

(in a coconut shell)

Robyn Hood Black is a poet, children's author, and artist living in the mountains of South Carolina. Her poetry appears in A WORLD FULL OF POEMS (DK Children, Sylvia Vardell, Editor), THE POETRY OF US (National Geographic, J. Patrick Lewis, Editor), SCHOOL PEOPLE (Wordsong) and LULLABY AND KISSES SWEET (Abrams) by Lee Bennett Hopkins, THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK (Roaring Brook) by Georgia Heard, many books in the Pomelo Books POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY Series by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, including the most recent, HOP TO IT, and POEMS ARE TEACHERS by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater (Heinemann). Her fiction has been published in HIGHLIGHTS, and her poetry in HIGHLIGHTS HELLO, HOPSCOTCH and LADYBUG. Robyn's haiku regularly appear in leading contemporary haiku journals such as Frogpond and Modern Haiku as well as in anthologies, and she has presented several workshops on haiku for all ages. Her first two books were SIR MIKE (Scholastic Library) and WOLVES (Intervisual Books), no longer in print. She also creates "literary art with a vintage vibe" through her art business & Etsy shop, artsyletters.

(the whole coconut)

Robyn Hood Black is a poet, children's author, and artist living in the mountains of South Carolina. Her poetry appears in A WORLD FULL OF POEMS (DK Children, Sylvia Vardell, Editor), THE POETRY OF US (National Geographic, J. Patrick Lewis, Editor), SCHOOL PEOPLE (Wordsong) and LULLABY AND KISSES SWEET (Abrams) by Lee Bennett Hopkins, THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK (Roaring Brook) by Georgia Heard, many books in the Pomelo Books POETRY FRIDAY ANTHOLOGY Series by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, including the most recent, HOP TO IT, and POEMS ARE TEACHERS by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater (Heinemann).

 

Her fiction has been published in HIGHLIGHTS, and her poetry in HIGHLIGHTS HELLO, HOPSCOTCH and LADYBUG. Robyn's haiku regularly appear in leading contemporary haiku journals such as Frogpond and Modern Haiku as well as in anthologies, and she has presented several workshops on haiku for all ages. Her first two books were SIR MIKE (Scholastic Library) and WOLVES (Intervisual Books), no longer in print. 

 

She has also written nature profiles of animals for a character education curriculum, Core Essentials, for many years. Robyn enjoys sharing her passions for writing, art, and animals through school visits and speaking engagements. She also creates "literary art with a vintage vibe" through her art business & Etsy shop, artsyletters.


She was born in Tennessee the same year two of her favorite books debuted: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville. (That's 1963 if you don't want to look it up.)

Robyn grew up writing and drawing in Orlando, Florida - under the spell of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and rocket trails launched from the coast. She spent hours and days and years riding her bike around lakes and exploring the woods near her neighborhood. Her childhood included companionship with lizards, gerbils, hamsters, a parakeet, fish, turtles, cats, and dogs - pretty much any animal her parents would let her have. She talked to wild birds on a fairly regular basis and still does.

Editor of her elementary school newspaper at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando, she later worked on the newspaper staff at Winter Park High School. Copy editor for her college yearbook, Robyn was a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of Furman University with a B.A. in English.

Robyn draws on a variety of work experience from newspaper reporter to freelance artist to middle school English teacher. She has worked extensively with animals and children and volunteered for several years with wolves at a wildlife preserve/zoo in Georgia.

An active member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Robyn coordinated several SCBWI Southern Breeze Springmingle conferences in Atlanta. She also coordinated a poetry retreat with Rebecca Kai Dotlich for the region in 2011, and a regional conference for the Haiku Society of America in 2017.

She and her husband of 38 years are parents of two amazing adult children and are new grandparents. They are vegans, after going vegetarian 35 years ago.

Blog Interviews

and featured on these blogs...

Mentions in the Media...

Online Radio Interviews

Robyn has been interviewed on radio for the Martha Zoller Show, WDUN-550, Gainesville, Ga., and on "Following Your Passions" with Bernard Kearse, Radio Sandy Springs, Ga.

She was also featured in a local e-zine, FamilyFirstMagazine.com, in April 2008 for National Poetry Month.