Poet & Painter

About

Valencia Robin is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes poetry and painting. A recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, her debut poetry collection, Ridiculous Light, won Persea Books’ first book prize, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and was named one of Library Journal’s best poetry books of 2019. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and The Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) as well as other publications. She is also the winner of VQR’s Emily Clark Balch Prize and her second collection of poems, Lost Cities, is scheduled to be published by Persea Books in 2025.

A co-founder of GalleryDAAS at the University of Michigan, Robin’s artwork has been shown nationally and supported by the King-Chavez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowship and the Center for the Education of Women’s Margaret Towsley Fellowship. Robin has an MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. A teacher, editor, curator and arts administrator, she does readings, artist talks, class visits and workshops at colleges and universities around the country. Robin currently teaches at East Tennessee State University and lives in Johnson City, Tennessee.