Stuff
Robin Romm Revealed
About Robin Romm
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Previous occupations:federal investigator, art teacher, nanny
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Favorite job:Writing.
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High school and/or college:South Eugene High School then to Brown University
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Name of your favorite composer or music artist?:The dryer.
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Favorite movie:The Graduate. Grizzly Man.
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Favorite television show:Six Feet Under. Mad Men.
Revealing Questions
- Q. How would you describe your life in only 8 words?
- A. Why do this when you can write a whole memoir?
- Q. How would you describe perfect happiness?
- A. Dim sum, a noisy walk downtown, then the beach with my dog to hunt for sand dollars.
- Q. What’s your greatest fear?
- A. Loss.
- Q. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?
- A. On a windy cliff overlooking the Pacific.
- Q. With whom in history do you most identify?
- A. My great-grandmother with her feathered hats.
- Q. Which living person do you most admire?
- A. I am not built to have heroes, only friends.
- Q. What are your most overused words or phrases?
- A. Apparently I use sparkly and secret a lot. I have to go back and take these out.
- Q. What do you regret most?
- A. It's a sparkly secret.
- Q. If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?
- A. I would be a country music singer with all the bangles and boots.
- Q. What is your greatest achievement?
- A. Hm. I hope I haven't achieved it yet.
- Q. What’s your greatest flaw?
- A. I'm not telling.
- Q. What’s your best quality?
- A. I have very thin fingers.
- Q. If you could be any person or thing, who or what would it be?
- A. I don't know. Maybe...an underwater rock in a tropical sea.
- Q. What trait is most noticeable about you?
- A. No one I have asked while filling this out will tell me.
- Q. Who is your favorite fictional hero?
- A. I don't have one.
- Q. Who is your favorite fictional villain?
- A. Humbert Humbert.
- Q. If you could meet any historical character, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?
- A. My mind doesn't really work like this--but I have always wanted to go to one of those parties in the Great Gatsby. And maybe I would like to go out to tea with Emily Holmes Coleman. I'd want her to try and tell me about that stint she wrote about in The Shutter of Snow. I bet it would be a wild tea party, full of gasps and hands waving.
- Q. What is your biggest pet peeve?
- A. Messy toothpaste tubes and being too close to people on public transit or in the gym.
- Q. What is your favorite occupation, when you’re not writing?
- A. Cooking and hiking with my dog.
- Q. What’s your fantasy profession?
- A. Again, I would be a country music star with bangles and boots.
- Q. What 3 personal qualities are most important to you?
- A. Honesty, curiosity, wit.
- Q. If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your days, what would it be?
- A. Dim sum.
- Q. What are your 5 favorite songs?
- A. This changes so often, but since I was able to talk, I've loved Johnny Cash.
On Books and Writing
- Q. How did you come to write Mercy Papers?
- A. When my mother was dying after a nine year (lost) battle with cancer, I returned home to Oregon from the San Francisco Bay Area where I had lived for a number of years. I'd already returned home that summer, and was frustrated that I had to keep upending my life, even though I adored my mother and knew I wanted to be with her at the end. I was in graduate school at San Francisco State at the time, writing fiction. But when I went to Oregon, it was like all of those imaginary people, their imagined lives and loves and dogs and dinners--they just didn't matter. I would sit with my journal and play with the pen until someone needed me to deal with medications or make soup. Finally, a professor of mine asked me why I didn't just write down what was happening around me. She allowed me to forget about my attachment to fiction for a while, and this was the beginning of The Mercy Papers. I started it up there in my childhood bedroom three weeks before I lost my mother.
