Mary Robison

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Mary Robison (b. January 14, 1949) is an American short-story writer and novelist. She has published collections of her short stories, and in 2001 her novel Why Did I Ever. She has been categorized as a "minimalist" writer (though she dislikes that label) along with authors such as Amy Hempel and Raymond Carver.

Robison was born in Washington, D.C. and raised with her seven siblings in Ohio. From an early age she was interested in writing and as a child kept a journal and wrote poetry as a teenager. She once ran away from home and journeyed to Florida in search of Jack Kerouac.

In 1977 The New Yorker published her short story "Sisters". During the 1980s she published short-story collections, including An Amateur's Guide to the Night (1983) and Believe Them (1988).

In the 1990s she suffered from severe writer's block and in an effort to overcome it she recorded thoughts with a tape recorder and later transcribed them to thousands of note cards. These thoughts were reworked to become the novel Why Did I Ever, which is comprised of 536 short chapters.