Robin Lee Hatcher | Author Bio

Best-selling novelist Robin Lee Hatcher is known for her heartwarming and emotionally charged stories of faith, courage, and love. She discovered her vocation after many years of reading everything she could put her hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and ketchup bottles. The winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction (Whispers from Yesterday), the RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance (Patterns of Love and The Shepherd's Voice), two RT Career Achievement Awards (Americana Romance and Inspirational Fiction), and the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, Robin is the author of over 60 novels, including Catching Katie, named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Library Journal.

Robin enjoys being with her family, spending time in the beautiful Idaho outdoors, reading books that make her cry, and watching romantic movies. She is passionate about the theater, and several nights every summer, she can be found at the outdoor amphitheater of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, enjoying Shakespeare under the stars. She makes her home on the outskirts of Boise, sharing it with Poppet the high-maintenance Papillon.

Did you always want to be a writer?

No, I didn't, although I loved books and stories even before I could read. In fact, I went to my first day of first grade with only one goal in mind — learn to read. When they didn't teach me how that very first day, I told my mom there was no point in going back. Fortunately, my mom knew who was boss, and I did go back to school.

When I was young, what I wanted to be most in all the world was a movie star. My closest friends all nod their heads, I'm sure, when I say this, knowing my theatrical nature. I took ballet for seven years, and I was in various theater productions, both in school and as a young adult.

Robin for dance recital (Showboat) | Robin (in black at left) in Everyman
Robin for dance recital Robin (far left) in the 1978 production of Everyman

My storytelling career began in grade school when I told my fifth grade friends that my mother was born in a covered wagon while coming west on the Oregon Trail. It seemed plausible. My mother was, after all, 47 years old at the time. My word! Had they even invented the wheel when she was born? [Sorry, Mom.]

Fast forward to high school. I was a compulsive writer, scribbling stories and poetry in notebooks and on binders. This wasn't work. This was fun! Writing could transport me to any place, any time. How cool.

writing

I also was a lover of horses and spent many years riding, competing, and raising them.

Robin with her favorite filly

Marriage and family filled the decade of my twenties. I read voraciously. I daydreamed. In my mind, I reworked the endings of both movies and books any time they didn't suit me. I performed with a Christian theater troupe. Then I got an idea for a story, a Gone With The Wind type saga. I talked about it with others for about six months. Finally, I sat down and began to write. I wrote long hand on yellow legal pads and typed the pages on the office Selectric typewriter during lunch hours and coffee breaks. Nine months later, I had a book, and a little over two years after that, it was published.

Robin at work (with that typewriter that started it all) — check out that 1980's hair!
Robin at work (with that typewriter that started it all)

The rest, as they say, is history. After nine years of writing whenever I could find a spare moment, I quit my day job the month my ninth novel was released in order to write full time and have been at it ever since. These days, the nest is empty. My daughters are grown with families of their own, and my mother (past her 95th birthday — who was not born in a covered wagon) lives with me. Life isn't always easy, but God is always good.

I am blessed, indeed.

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