Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb
Hobb at the Trolls & Legends festival in Mons, Belgium in April 2011
Born	Margaret Astrid Lindholm (1952-03-05) March 5, 1952 Berkeley, California, US
Pen name	Robin Hobb, Megan Lindholm
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Period	1983–present
Genre	Fantasy fiction
Notable works	Assassin's Apprentice Royal Assassin Assassin's Quest
Spouse	Fred Ogden
Website
www.robinhobb.com www.meganlindholm.com

Robin Hobb is a pseudonym of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (born March 5, 1952), an American writer. She is best known for the books set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which started in 1995 with the publication of Assassin's Apprentice, the first book in the Farseer trilogy.

Early life

Margaret Astrid Lindholm was born in Berkeley, California, in 1952, but from the age of ten, she grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. After graduating from Austin E. Lathrop High School, she studied at Denver University for a year and then returned to Alaska. At eighteen, she married Fred Ogden and they returned to his home town of Kodiak, located at the tip of Kodiak Island in south-central Alaska.

Writing as Megan Lindholm

Lindholm sold her first short story to a children's magazine, leading to an early career writing for children. Her short fiction for children appeared in magazines such as Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and Highlights for Children. She also composed educational material, short works of fiction created to a very specific vocabulary list, which were used in SRA's programmed reading material.

In the 1970s, Lindholm also began to write short fantasy, publishing short stories in fanzines such as Space and Time (edited by Gordon Linzner). Her first professional sale as a fantasy writer was the short story "Bones for Dulath," which appeared in the 1979 Amazons! anthology, and which introduced her recurring characters Ki and Vandien. The anthology, published by DAW Books, won a World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology. A second story featuring Ki and Vandien, "The Small One," was published in Fantastic Stories in 1980.

Until 1995, she continued to publish exclusively under the name Megan Lindholm. Her fiction under that name spans several slices of the fantasy genre, from fantasy adventure (the Ki and Vandien tales) to urban fantasy (Wizard of the Pigeons).

Lindholm's first novel, Harpy's Flight, was published by Ace in 1983. It was the first of four novels about the characters Ki and Vandien, the last of which was published in 1989. She contributed short stories to a shared world anthology entitled Liavek from 1985 to 1988, and co-wrote a novel, The Gypsy, with Steven Brust.

She has continued to publish short stories as Megan Lindholm, including an appearance in the 2013 anthology Year's Best SF 18.

Writing as Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb, a pseudonym that Lindholm has used for writing works of epic traditional fantasy, first appeared in 1995.

The first Robin Hobb novel, Assassin's Apprentice, was the first volume of what grew to be three trilogies narrated in first person by FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of a prince, and featuring an enigmatic character called the Fool. As of 2003, Robin Hobb had sold over one million copies of her first nine novels, which formed three trilogies set in the Realm of the Elderlings.

From 2009 to 2013, Hobb released the four novels that comprised The Rain Wild Chronicles (Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons and Blood of Dragons), set in the same world as Hobb's earlier trilogies.

The Soldier Son trilogy (Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic) are Hobb's only novels to be set outside of the Realm of the Elderlings, and were published between 2006 and 2009. In addition, The Inheritance, published in 2011, was a collection of short stories written both as Robin Hobb and as Megan Lindholm.

In 2013, Hobb announced that she would resume the story, decades later in life, of her two most popular characters in the Realm of the Elderlings series. The first volume of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, Fool's Assassin, was published in August 2014, and the second, Fool's Quest, a year later. The final volume, Assassin's Fate, is expected in Spring 2017.

Critical reception

In 1981, Megan Lindholm was awarded an Alaska State Council of the Arts prize for her short story "The Poaching." As Megan Lindholm, her short fiction works have been finalists for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards, and winner of the Asimov’s Readers Award.

Her books have been praised by Orson Scott Card, who has stated that she "arguably set the standard for the modern serious fantasy novel". George R.R. Martin has praised her work, writing, "In today's crowded fantasy market Robin Hobb's books are like diamonds in a sea of zircons."

In 2014, she was a Guest of Honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London.

Personal life

She currently publishes under both names, and lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Bibliography

Main article: Robin Hobb bibliography

Interviews

• Interview conducted by Annaïg Houesnard for Elbakin.net during "Les Imaginales" 2008.
• Interview conducted by Rob Bedford for sffworld.com
• Interview conducted by Patrick for sffworld.com
• Interview on wotmania.com
• Interview conducted by Jay Tomio
• Interview conducted by Maïté Hoste for KissMyGeek.com
• Interview conducted by Bertrand Hallyn (Duiker) for The Breathless Quills, Les Plumes Asthmatiques and Antiquité-SFFF

External links

• Official website as Megan Lindholm
• Official website as Robin Hobb
• Megan Lindholm at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Robin Hobb at the Internet Book List
• Megan Lindholm at the Internet Book List
• Template:Goodreads author
• Template:Goodreads author
• Robin Hobb at Fantasy Literature
• Blood Memories Template:Lang-icon (unofficial)
• Robin Hobb at Library of Congress, with 21 library catalog records
• Margaret Ogden (no records) and Megan Lindholm (10) at LC Authorities