J. Jill Robinson

Jacqueline Jill Robinson (born June 16, 1955) is a Canadian writer and editor.

She is the author of a novel and four collections of short stories.

Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals including Geist, the Antigonish Review, Event, Prairie Fire and the Windsor Review.

J. Jill Robinson was born in Langley, British Columbia in 1955, but she also had family ties to Alberta.

Her mother grew up in Calgary while her father, a doctor, was from Banff.

In 1979, she moved to Calgary where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and English literature as well as a Master's degree in 19th century American literature at the University of Calgary.

Her Master's thesis was entitled, The circumferential vision: love and death in the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

In 1987, while attending the Banff Centre for the Arts, where she encountered writers from across the country, Robinson realized that she wanted to be a writer herself.

From 1988 to 1991, she studied creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with among others, Frank Soos and Peggy Shumaker, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Robinson earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alaska in 1990.

Her MFA thesis consisted of writings that later became the basis for Saltwater Trees, her first collection of short stories published in 1991 when she was 36.

The Writers' Guild of Alberta awarded Saltwater Trees its Howard O'Hagan prize for short fiction.

Reviewer Mary Walters Riskin noted the book was a fine beginning to Robinson's career.

"One of the most refreshing aspects of this collection is that so many of the 13 stories in Saltwater Trees rise out of the insanities, the batterings and the drudgeries of real life to end on notes of hope," Riskin wrote.

In 1993, J. Jill Robinson published Lovely In Her Bones, a collection of 11 stories including "Finding Linette," co-winner of Event magazine's 1992 prize for creative nonfiction.

Calgary journalist and author Ken McGoogan, who interviewed Robinson about the new book, described "Finding Linette" as a "technically sophisticated" story that "intercuts the straight-ahead tale of a family's Christmas gathering with memories—and conflicting versions—of the long-ago death of a child."

Robinson warned, however, that although the story was based on "family mythology" and other stories in the book came from her own experience, they should not be read too literally.

"People are using a more liberal definition of nonfiction," she said.

"There's a lot more freedom of structure and angle. A lot more room for imagination."

Lovely In Her Bones received favourable reviews.

The Globe and Mail critic John Doyle wrote that the stories were ones of "quiet self absorption" adding: "Fortunately, they are written in a clear, lucid prose and often attain a rhythm that saves them from static solipsism."

He summed up the collection as "a mosaic of sharply observed events and incidents" calling it the "best type of short story collection" and adding: "At the close of the collection the mosaic has taken shape and stands as a radiant insight into the power of painful memories."

The Globe's book editors listed Lovely In Her Bones as "among the books we couldn't put down in 1993."

In the Edmonton Journal, reviewer Valerie Compton pointed to Robinson's passage that begins, "I am always alone. Always thinking..."

as evidence of both the strengths and weaknesses of Lovely In Her Bones.

She called the stories "so pared down, so reduced to wistful contemplation that it is almost enervating. Almost, but not quite, because these stories depend for their effects on insights we might not achieve without spending a good long time inside a character's head."

J. Jill Robinson moved from Calgary to Saskatoon in 1993 to join the writer, Steven Ross Smith whom she would later marry.

From 1995 to 1999, she was editor of the literary magazine Grain, published quarterly by the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild.

She has taught English literature and creative writing at the Universities of Calgary and Saskatchewan, at St. Peter's College in Muenster, Saskatchewan and at the First Nations University of Canada.

In 1995, she published Eggplant Wife, a novella and short stories.

The collection was shortlisted for the 1996 Saskatchewan Book Award.

Robinson was married to the poet Steven Ross Smith (1999 to 2022) and is the mother of a son, Emmett H Robinson Smith, born in 1995.

She lives on Galiano Island in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

She was the 24th writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library during 2004–2005.

"I was the only Canadian in a graduate program with just 12 students in it...and it was great," she told a reporter in 2004.

She added that the program provided her with "a toolbox of skills and techniques" while giving her a chance to read a wide variety of American writers.

Her novel, More In Anger, published in 2012, tells the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters who bear the emotional scars of loveless marriages, corrosive anger and misogyny.

Robinson has won numerous literary competitions including two Western Magazine Awards, two Saskatchewan Book Awards, two prizes for creative nonfiction from Event magazine, the PRISM international fiction contest and the Howard O'Hagan award for short fiction from the Writers' Guild of Alberta.

Her novel and stories have also won critical acclaim for their vivid characters, spare writing and tragic themes that nevertheless convey humour and hope.

Robinson was appointed writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library for 2020–2021.