Beeman, Robin 1940-

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BEEMAN, Robin 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born March 1, 1940, in New Orleans, LA; daughter of Robert (an architect) and Katherine (an artist; maiden name, Byrne) Lobdell; married Frederick Beeman, June 23, 1959 (divorced, October 2, 1988); children: Greg, Ashley. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of the Americas, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1965; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1990. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Nature (birds, fungi, redwoods), backpacking, gardening, local politics.

ADDRESSES:

Office—P.O. Box 963, Occidental, CA 95465.

CAREER:

English teacher and part-time librarian. Sonoma State University, adjunct professor, 1990-95; also taught in Mexico.

MEMBER:

Friends of PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Herb Wilner Short Story Award, San Francisco State University, 1988; Silver Apple Award, National Educational Film and Video Festival, 1989, for Brazil; fiction fellow, Writers at Work, 1989; award from PEN Syndicated Fiction Project, 1990; Texas Review Novella Prize, 2000, for The Lost Art of Desire.

WRITINGS:

Brazil (film script), produced by International Video Network, 1989.

A Parallel Life and Other Stories, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 1992.

A Minus Tide (novella) Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

The Lost Art of Desire (novella), Texas Review Press (Huntsville, TX), 2001.

Work represented in anthologies, including Bless Me, Father, edited by Vecchione and Sumrall, Dutton (New York, NY), 1994. Contributor of short stories, articles, and reviews to magazines, including Gettysburg Review, Puerto del Sol, Crazyhorse, Louisiana Literature, Other Voices, Sojourner, Apalachee Quarterly, North American Review, and Cutbank.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robin Beeman once told CA: "Although my work is not autobiographical, my primary motivation for writing is to save my life, to preserve the fragments of it that appear to mean something, to create some kind of order out of the chaos of existence. The characters who reveal themselves to me in my stories help me to do this.

"The writers who have left the most lasting impressions on me, in terms of what they attempted and achieved, are Virginia Woolf, Flannery O'Connor, and Willa Cather.

"I get up every morning excited about the prospect of being able to work. I sit in front of my computer, with my fingers on the keyboard, and try to release my conscious hold on the story. When the writing is going well, the story tells itself to me. Characters appear, and I listen to them, and watch them, and try to get it right on paper.

"I write about people as confused as I am about what this process of living is all about. I write about people trying to sort things out, trying to understand the nature of human relationships, failing often, but sometimes succeeding in being honest with themselves and others, in loving unselfishly."