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Thomas Eugene Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025) was an American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies" (also known as ""). Robbins had lived in La Conner, Washington, since 1970, where he wrote nine of his books. His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into the 1993 film version by Gus Van Sant. His last work, published in 2014, was Tibetan Peach Pie, a self-declared "un-memoir".
Robbins attended Warsaw High School (class of 1949) and Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia, where he won the Senior Essay Medal. The next year he enrolled at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, to major in journalism, leaving at the end of his sophomore year after being disciplined by his fraternity for bad behavior and failing to earn a letter in basketball.
In 1953, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after receiving his draft notice, spending a year as a meteorologist in Korea, followed by two years in the Special Weather Intelligence unit of the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska. He was discharged in 1957 and returned to Richmond, Virginia, where his poetry readings at the Rhinoceros Coffee House led to his gaining a reputation on the local bohemian scene.
In 1962, Robbins moved to Seattle to seek an M.A. at the Far East Institute of the University of Washington. During the next five years in Seattle (minus a year spent in New York City researching a book on Jackson Pollock) he worked for the Seattle Times as an art critic. (2025). 9780062267405, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062267405 In 1965, he wrote a column on the arts for Seattle Magazine as well as occasionally for Art in America and Artforum. (2025). 9780062267405, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062267405 Also during this time, he hosted a weekly alternative radio show, Notes from the Underground, at non-commercial KSER, Seattle. It was in 1967, while writing a review of the rock band The Doors, that Robbins said he found his literary voice. While working on his first novel, Robbins worked the weekend copy desk of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (2025). 9780062267405, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062267405 Robbins would remain in Seattle, on and off, for the following forty years. (2025). 9780062267405, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780062267405
Robbins's 1982 contract with editor Alan Rinzler stipulated that he would accompany Robbins on three holiday trips to resorts Robbins would choose where he could discuss the work-in-progress novel. Rinzler later discovered it was Jitterbug Perfume. He later wrote this on the topic of editing for Robbins:
Tom would read out loud from his work in progress, and I would comment. Just a few pages at a time. He was a real southern gentleman, and welcomed intellectual discourse about his theme, characters, and intentions, from the inside. He took the process of conception, research, trial and error, moving things around, changing voices and pitch very seriously, wrote slowly and carefully, revised constantly, developing, refining and evolving this novel over the course of about two years.Michael Dare described Robbins's writing style: "When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. Then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. Then, and only then, does he add a period". When Robbins was asked to explain his "gift" for storytelling in 2002, he replied:
I'm descended from a long line of preachers and policemen. Now, it's common knowledge that cops are congenital liars, and evangelists spend their lives telling fantastic tales in such a way as to convince otherwise rational people that they're factual. So, I guess I come by my narrative inclinations naturally.
Over the course of his writing career, Robbins delivered readings on four continents, in addition to performances he gave at festivals from Seattle to San Miguel de Allende. Robbins also read at Bumbershoot in 2014.
In October 2012, Robbins received the 2012 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia. In 2015, he was awarded the Willamette Writers' Lifetime Achievement Award and received the award at the Gala Awards Event at the Willamette Writers Conference on August 8, 2015. On September 2, 2023, a "King for a Day" gala and parade was held in Robbins's honor in his hometown of La Conner, Washington. The event also raised money for a children's art program at the local library.
Robbins defended, in print, Indian mystic Osho, although he was never a follower. Robbins spent three weeks at ceremonial sites in Mexico and Central America with mythologist Joseph Campbell, and studied mythology in Greece and Sicily with the poet Robert Bly. Robbins also traveled to Timbuktu. Robbins was a member of the Marijuana Policy Project's advisory board, alongside numerous other notable figures such as Jack Black, Ani DiFranco, Tommy Chong, and Jello Biafra; he was honoured at the Laureate Dinner of Seattle's Rainier Club that has also recognized other local figures, such as Charles Johnson, Stephen Wadsworth, Timothy Egan and August Wilson; and he sat on the board of directors of The Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas (formerly 826 Seattle), "a nonprofit writing and tutoring center dedicated to helping youth, ages six to 18, improve their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write."
Madame Zoe, a Richmond psychic and palm reader who once lived in Richmond's South Side, was fictionalized in Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. In 2016 Richmond artists Noah Scalin and Thea Duskin recreated her bedroom as an installation in the art gallery at Chop Suey Books in Carytown in Richmond. The novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into a film in 1993 by Gus Van Sant, starring Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, and Keanu Reeves.
He was friends with Gus Van Sant, and performed the voice-over narration in Van Sant's film adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. He was friends with directors Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph, as well, and had small speaking parts in five feature films.
Robbins lived in La Conner, Washington, and died there on February 9, 2025, at the age of 92.
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