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Robin Hobb biography

Robin Hobb, real name Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, was born in 1952 in California. She uses the pen name of Robin Hobb due to unsatisfactory sales when writing under the name of Megan Lindholm.

At nine years of age Robin and her family left California to live a self-sufficient life in Alaska. It was here she met her first friend and companion, a wolf/dog hybrid called Bruno that joined her as she explored the woods that surrounded her new family home. Due to living this "back to basics" lifestyle she became proficient in plumbing and electrics. She writes fantasy fiction under the names of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm and presently lives in Tacoma, Washington.

After attending Denver University she returned to Alaska and married a fisherman. They lived on a small island of the coast of Alaska called Kodiak and have lived near the sea ever since. The writer of twelve novels, she has been nominated for both the Hugo and Novela awards but has yet to win as of yet.

Any writer who has ever sat through a signing can tell you some people come up and have a hundred questions, and other people come up and you can suddenly see that when they get right up there to get their book signed, they're not really sure why they came or if they want to meet you as a person, because then that makes everything they enjoyed in this book unreal, and in some ways possibly invalidates their enjoyment.

From: Robin Hobb interview with Locus Online

Robin Hobb has written stories ever since she learned to write. She knew from a very early age that she wanted to be an author but was also realistic in knowing that very few are able to support themselves financially through writing alone. However, she clung on to the dream and was prepared to do other jobs to bring in the money whilst she continued writing. At the age of ten she moved from California to Alaska in a Volkswagen Camper Van and the family settled into a far less comfortable but far more exciting life. Hobb holds the move to Alaska as the single most important thing is her shaping as a writer, the rural setting involved getting her hands dirty and tasks such as harvesting and rearing animals helped her to gain an insight into what living in medieval times (the predominant setting of fantasy novels) was really like.

At the age of 17 she graduated from high school and went off to the University of Colorado in Denver where the urban/rural move was reversed. After a year in Colorado she returned to Fairbanks in Alaska and married a local fisherman and moved to Kodiak Island, off the coast of Alaska. It was then that she began to submit the stories that she had been writing. Initially the stories were for children but these were found to be far more difficult than was initially thought. The introduction of computers and word processors had a positive effect on Hobb and she found that she was able to spend more time writing and less time correcting.

Over the course of the following 10 years Robin Hobb had three children and she also managed to continue writing and submitting stories. 1982 brought the sale of her first book, Harpy’s Flight and three other books with the same characters quickly followed. These books were written under the name of Megan Lindholm and although the feedback from readers and critics was positive fame and fortune were still a very distant glimmer. After several collaborations and more published work she sat down to start something different, a piece of work under the writing name of Chivalry’s Bastard, she also chose to write in the first-person narrative that is far from common. It was at this time, in talks with her agent, that she decided to create a new name to go with the new writing style – the androgynous Robin Hobb was selected, Robin could be a man’s or a woman’s name and Hobb was used due to its similarity to fantasy folk like Hobbits and Hobgoblins.

To me, writing in the first person seems the most natural way to tell a story. It's easy to find the character's voice, and by bringing the reader into the protagonist's mind, you automatically bring the reader deep into the story. I like the intimacy of telling a story in the first person, because the reader will know things that the protagonist would not otherwise verbalize at all. The disadvantage is obvious. The reader can only know exactly as much as the protagonist knows. And sometimes that means that I, as a writer, have to rely on the reader to be alert and connect the dots, so to speak. In that way, the reader will perhaps be able to see what is coming even if the main character doesn't. Or the protagonist may interpret a situation one way while the reader has a different view on it.

From: Robin Hobb interview with SFFWorld.com

The fantasy series that Robin Hobb is best known for is The Farseer Trilogy.The idea for the trilogy came from a scrap of paper that she kept in a drawer - it simply stated - "What if magic were addictive?" "And what if the magic was destructive or degenerative?". Comprising of three books, the plot follows the adventures of a trained assassin called Fitz. The trilogy began with Assassin's Apprentice, published in 1995, then followed by Royal Assassin in 1996 and completed by Assassin's Quest in 1997. The Farseer trilogy brought Robin Hobb both success and critical acclaim.

A short time after completing the The Farseer Trilogy, she wrote The Liveship Traders Trilogy. This was viewed as a "necessary relationship" to the Farseer books. The trilogy is a nautical tale that begins with the Ship of Magic, published in 1998, The Mad Ship (1999) and Ship of Destiny in the year 2000.

Two years after the publication of Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb's new trilogy, The Tawny Man continued the story of Fitz and commences 15 years after the events in Assassin's Quest. The three books were Fool's Errand (2002), Golden Fool (2003) and Fool's Fate (2003).

In 2005, Robin Hobb left the safety of the previous trilogies behind and wrote the Soldier Son Trilogy which follows the life of Nevare Burvelle and his preparation for and education at the King's Cavalla Academy. So far two books have been released, Shaman's Crossing (2005) and Forest Mage (2006). Renegade's Magic is expected to be released in 2007.

Robin Hobb has now completed nine fantasy books and is hard at work on the tenth.

As Megan Lindolm, she has written a number of fantasy novels, most notably, The Reindeer People and Wolf's Brother.

For more information, including a very useful FAQ section you should visit the official Robin Hobb site.
Robin Hobb FAQ - Official Robin Hobb web site

Robin Hobb bibliography

Wizard of the Pigeons (1986)
Alien Earth (1992)

The Farseer Trilogy

The Liveship Traders

The Tawny Man

Soldier Son Trilogy

Robin Hobb interviews

A pleasant interview in 1998, midway through writing the Liveship Traders, in which she explains the ideas behind her books and some similarities with the Lord of the Rings. Robin Hobb interview with Locus Magazine (1998) >>

Robin Hobb was interviewed by Paul Norman from gatewaymonthly.com in July 2006. The interview mainly regards Forest Mage but Robin Hobb also talks about the Assassin books and her methods of writing. Robin Hobb interview, July 2006

In 2005, SFFWorld.com interviewed Robin Hobb. This is an insightful interview, conducted just after the release of Renegade’s Magic, the first book in the Soldier Son Trilogy. http://www.sffworld.com/interview/122p0.html

Robin Hobb critical acclaim

"Robin Hobb writes achingly well" SFX

"Hobb is one of the great modern fantasy writers ... what makes her novels as addctive as morphine is not just their imaginative brilliance but the way her characters are compromised and manipulated by politics" The Times