About Mara

My name is Mara Eve Robbins. I am 35-year-old creative writing major, and I hope to minor in Women’s Studies. It was really interesting taking this class in combination with a class called ‘Writing a Life’ with the writer in residence at Hollins this year, James Dodson. Here’s a link to an essay I wrote for that class detailing a piece of my life. ‘Writing a Life’ and ‘Life Histories/Self-Narratives’ complemented each other quite well at times, and at other times it reminded me of taking ‘Intro to Psychology’ and ‘Intro to Women’s Studies’ at the same time during my first semester at Hollins. That is, sometimes the ideas we studied would directly contradict each other. I liked this, even when it frustrated me. It’s illuminating to look at a subject from all possible perspectives.

I have an eight year old daughter named Kyla Rose, who I love beyond all sensibility; a black lab named Ella Blue, who loves to play ball beyond all sensibility; two cats, George and Starlight, and a white rat named Alix who we rescued from the psych lab last year. Okay, so technically Alix and Starlight are Kyla’s pets, but I’m the one who feeds them most of the time.

I live in Floyd County, just up the mountain from Roanoke, but I am not native to Virginia. I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and moved here when I was eight. We lived for a time without electricity and running water when I was nine and ten, and I was home schooled on and off throughout my early education. Actually, that’s part of the reason my parents chose to move to Virginia. Even though my mother had a degree in education and was a certified teacher, my parents were arrested for child neglect for teaching me at home in NC. The mountains have always seemed like native land to me, and I tend to say that Floyd County is my natural habitat.

I’m not sure if I’m a sophomore or a junior at this point. After going to school full time for two years, the stress of trying to carry a full course load, maintain a home, and be a single parent caught up with me, and I’m attending part time for now. At times I wish I had started higher education earlier in life, it would have certainly been easier in some ways. At other times I am grateful for the experience I bring along with me to my classes here. Self-educated, and an avid reader my whole life, there are parts of academia that I truly cherish; because I get credit for doing things I have always loved to do. I also enjoy challenging the boundaries of academics, because I believe we learn best from experience. That is in part why this class has been so challenging and so rewarding. We have explored theory, but we have also put it to the test. We’ve been exposed to multiple approaches, and been given the freedom to develop our own. It’s been a lot of work, but valuable, fulfilling work.

I love to write, and hope to make a career out of it, somehow. I also love beadwork, spoken word poetry, scrabble, intense discussions, and close relationships with family and friends. I feel very fortunate to be a student at Hollins, because I truly appreciate the learning environment and the close-knit community. I’m a founding member of The Floyd Writer’s Circle, and have participated in our regular meetings as often as possible since starting school. I hope to bring new ideas and inspirations back to my community through

 my work at Hollins, and my work within this class.

Kyla Rose and Mara Eve on Kyla's Seventh Birthday

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