Tom Robbins is an American writer born on July 22, 1936, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
His novels are known for their intricate, often fantastical storytelling, with a strong satirical undercurrent and a dense layering of unusual, quirky, and carefully researched details.
Tom Robbins’s novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into a film in 1993 directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Uma Thurman.
In 1954, Robbins enrolled at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, but left due to disciplinary issues. He later moved to New York City intending to become a poet, but eventually enlisted in the Air Force under the threat of conscription and served for three years in Korea.
While stationed there, he studied meteorology and became involved in extensive black-market trade of goods such as soap and toothpaste. He later joked that he “helped Mao get his toothpaste.”
After returning to civilian life in Richmond, Virginia, in 1960, he attended the Richmond Professional Institute (later Virginia Commonwealth University), where he served as editor of the student newspaper and worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
He later pursued graduate studies in Eastern philosophy at the University of Washington in Seattle, working for both The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Since 1970 he has lived in La Conner, Washington, and received the Golden Umbrella Award at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival in 1997.
