Welcome.

I’m robin, a bewitched songbird trained in creative writing & small group facilitation. I am a queer, trans, disabled, autistic, mad songwriter-poet, a disordered organizer, & a white Jewish settler in New York’s Hudson River Valley—unceded Lenapehoking, contemporary & ancestral homeland of the Munsee Lenape & Esopus people.

I was born in the United States, in southern California in 1991 & grew up primarily in New Jersey, Delaware, & Pennsylvania. My paternal ancestors before settling on this continent were Polish Jews—in the years preceding the historically accepted onset of World War II & the Shoah, those who were resourced enough emigrated from Poland to Chicago, & later to Los Angeles. German & English lineages dominate my maternal ancestry, which in dubious family lore includes connections to the 1620 Mayflower voyage & a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. I am a younger sibling to one biological brother, Noah, & an elder sibling to Daniel, a transracially adopted step-brother who passed into ancestry under the weight of anti-Black hegemony in 2021. Besides my surviving sibling, I am estranged from living family members.

I am chronically ill & un(der)employed, held aloft by the generosity of loving community & the luck of inheritances from composted relationships. The paradoxical nature of my inheritances—materials, skills, deficits, marginalizations, oppressions, & dominances—is embedded in my artistic & [re]generative practices. Singing & writing aid me in digesting mutuality in relational sustenance & rupture. On Patreon, I freely share & invite responses to my music, writing, & other offerings, embodying play, foolishness, monstrosity, madness, memory, ecstasy, grief, despair, liberation, dreaming, rest, transformation, failure, & other themes. I cast these artifacts as spells toward aiding you in sustaining harmony wherever you find belonging.

My labor through unsung studio will never exclude anybody based on an inability to pay, so material support from financially secure donors is needed. All contributions go toward covering living expenses, meeting my needs, & sustaining my practices in community. Whenever my income exceeds my expenses, I communicate with donors about redistributing surplus funds toward mutual aid-oriented formations & organizations local to me.

My writing & teaching have been institutionally recognized & supported by: The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts, Arizona State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program, The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, National University of Singapore’s University Scholars Programme, Susquehanna University’s Writers Institute, Johnsonburg Camp & Conference Center, & others.

I'm grateful to the mentors, peers, & friends—too numerous to name—who support[ed] me within & beyond these institutional settings.

Thank you for meeting me here.

[y]ours,
robin herold (she/it)