User:KatyLynnScarlett/Cass Robinson

Cass Robinson
Cass (Robinson) Van Gelder official headshot Cass (Robinson) Van Gelder official headshot
Pen name	Cass Robinson, Cassandra Robinson
Occupation	writer, novelist, singer, artist, playwright
Nationality	American; Cherokee
Period	1960's - present
Genre	Southern fiction
Subject	class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, Arkansas, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, feminism, betrayal, music, prodigy, suicide, and family
Literary movement	Southern fiction
Notable works	Ruby; The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars; Mary (age 4); A Dyslexic Writer; Mama (short story)
Spouse	Christopher Van Gelder (2008 - present) Erik Johnson (1986 - 2007), separated in 1990
Children	Elektra Johnson (artist/filmmaker) Samuel D.T. Moss(animator) and Olivia Ruggiero
Website
www.paininthecass.com

Cass Robinson (born May 20, 1966) is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Society of Technical Communicators, along with several other organizations that emphasize her work in music, visual art, and writing. She was born in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but has moved throughout the country - including New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. She is the only child of the late watercolor artist, Tonya Bailey (also known as Tonya Bailey Robinson and Tonya Robinson) and William Seeger (her mother's first cousin on their mothers' sides - Lindsey), though both parents had several of her half-siblings subsequently. Her previous fiction work has been based on this fact, along with other events that happened to her throughout her childhood in the South - particularly, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas (for which the town of Pearl stands in).

Biography

Early life

Cass Robinson was born on May 20, 1966 in Arkadelphia, Arkansas to the late watercolor artist, Tonya Bailey (also known as Tonya Bailey Robinson and Tonya Robinson) and William Seeger (her mother's first cousin on their mothers' sides - Lindsey). Tonya Bailey was eighteen at the time and married her first husband, Ronald Holderman, to hide the birth. Though his parents insisted they give up Robinson the day she was born, Holderman fought his parents and kept the child. Robinson's sister, Tiffany Chez Holderman/ Tiffany Chez Robinson was born in 1968. The couple, though, did not last and the marriage ended in divorce in 1971. A third child, Steffani Twink Holderman/ Steffani Twink Robinson was born in 1972. Her parentage was disputed until the early part of 2000, when her birth father, the Argentinean football player, Eduard (Eddie) Bloise, came forward.

When Robinson was five, her mother, Tonya, married Walter Robert Robinson, Jr. (known as Rob), a man who severely beat the children and their mother. Though family members knew of the abuse, no one stopped it nor helped them leave.

In about 1974, after Rob held a gun to the children's heads, threatening to kill them, their mother left with them for Oklahoma. Though they had left in the past, it had only been to campgrounds in the nearby national parks in the area.

After only 3 months, Rob came to Tonya’s rented house in Oklahoma and stole her only working vehicle, making it impossible for her to work and support the children. (He had gotten the information of her whereabouts from Tonya's own mother, whom he had been living with during Tonya’s absence). When the children became ill and Tonya could no longer support them, her mother and father convinced her to return to Hot Springs and eventually to Rob, where the beatings continued.

The two were divorced after 15 years of marriage after Tonya accidentally struck Rob during an argument, breaking his glasses. He left that evening and never returned.

Rob was killed after a car accident in 1988. He was struck by an oncoming dump truck he did not see as he was turning into his best friend's home. David Sears, a lawyer in a passing vehicle, pulled Rob from the burning wreckage. Though Rob clinically died 9 times on the way to the hospital, he remained in the hospital for 3 weeks until it was confirmed that he was in a non-reversible vegetative state. Because of his earlier adoption of Cass (who was the only child in the family over 21 at the time of the accident) and his divorce from Tonya, Cass was responsible for the decision to terminate his life support. Within a week of his death, the youngest sister came forward, claiming Rob had been sexually abusing her since she was 1 and had even continued up until the week before his death when he lured her to his apartment and then struck her unconscious.

Rumors swirled around this same time that the daughter of Rob’s best friend might actually be Rob’s daughter due to Rob leaving a healthy portion of his life insurance to the small child and the mother’s eventual non-collection of the money.

Early years

Because Robinson had an exceptional singing voice (originally Alto, now Soprano), her family encouraged her to pursue a musical career. She has stated during the 1996 San Francisco Reader's and Writers Conference where her work was featured that she did not consider becoming a writer until she was 28 years old. Until that point, “ ...writing had always been easy and I thought the career you chose had to be hard."

After having read an abandoned copy of Brad Newsham's, "All the Right Places", and calling him, she became encouraged to write her story. He recommended a local writer's group that he had attended. The leader of the group read her work, stated that he didn't think she was that good of a writer, but if she insisted on coming to the workshops, he couldn't stop her. She eventually became the leader of the group herself until she left the greater San Francisco area altogether. The group was the San Francisco Fiction Writers Collective.

That same year, she read Dorothy Allison’s “Bastard out of Carolina”, and wrote to the author. Based on the way she wrote her letter, Allison encouraged her to write her story, also. They continued their correspondence – even meeting twice at Allison’s readings in San Francisco and Berkeley – for a short period of time.

Through Robinson’s work with the San Francisco Fiction Writers Collective, she was introduced to the Squaw Valley Writer's Conference, held in Olympic Valley, CA. Though she and others had been warned not to expect much from the week there, Robinson found her first literary agent, M.J. Caen (wife of the late Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle essayist).

Robinson left Caen's agency only after a few months. "I had been taught that the art world - music, visual arts, particularly the literary world - these places were hard to get into. And I expected it would be hard for me. But I was unprepared for success. No one told me what to do if I were successful. Suddenly, when I went to parties, there were people who knew my name that I had never met. There were people who were writers starting out, just like me, who would hang off of me like they thought it might rub off on them. I was clueless. I didn't know what to do next or how to handle it. So I quit. And I disappeared."

Five years later, at the encouragement of her then-partner, singer/songwriter, Kenny Russell (and after Robinson’s claim of starting her Buddhist practice following Nichiren Daishonin’s Soka Gakkai practice), Robinson attended Squaw Valley Writer's Conference again, but with more confidence. Almost the identical situations happened to her, only this time she was more prepared. Mark Childress took it upon himself to personally hunt down an agent for Robinson. She met San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Adair Lara. During a side project, Lara, later, would recommend her agent friend, Amy Rennert, who would become Robinson's literary agent.

School years

Prior to her sixth grade year, Robinson was selected for Hot Springs National Park's first academically talented classes for the city. Children were selected by their work in the previous grade and recommended by their teachers.

In eighth grade, Robinson was again selected to be part of the new academic program, S.O.A.R.. This was a program for academically talented 8th graders that would allow them to go on unusual and creative field trips and have a more open learning experience.

In 1983, Robinson was selected to attend the Arkansas Governor's School for the Gifted and Talented in music and was an alternate in drama. She has stated that those five weeks were the most influential of her life, introducing her in part to the works of John Cage.

College years

In the early 1970s, Robinson attended University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with four scholarships - Donald E. LaPore Scholarship, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Music Scholarship, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Freshman Scholarship, and another unrecorded scholarship. She received the “I Dare You” award, also, but did not attend the corresponding conference for the winners. Robinson attended U of A though she was accepted into other colleges like Baylor University and Berklee College of Music, mainly because she feared leaving her sisters behind where she could not get to them in time if they needed help.

This proved to be prophetic since it was during this time that her parents separated after a gruesome and violent argument.

After her second unsuccessful year at U of A, Robinson left claiming that the music department was unfocused and unhelpful to her career. "They had me taking eleven classes for only 15 credits total, plus rehearsing for three choirs, plus seeing required concerts, plus participating in musicals and operas, and on and on. Eventually, I collapsed with migraines." She left in 1986 to marry fellow U of A Classics student, Erik Johnson.

Using the life insurance money from Rob’s death, Johnson and Robinson moved with their new daughter, Elektra, on New Year’s Day to Brooklyn. “At the time, we were both ‘Johnson’. And we lived on Johnson Street next door to Father Johnson, who we found out years later the street was named after one of his ancestors."

She eventually attended Hunter College in New York, New York and performed well, taking acting, playwriting, and arts management classes. While she took an English class, it was not a writing course and she managed a "B". She was on the Dean's List twice throughout her studies at Hunter College. Johnson and Robinson separated during this time but did not divorced until almost 20 years later.

While at Hunter College, she was asked to write music for several plays, including "A Family Affair", which was performed in New York. Because of her writing skills, she was asked several times by professors to join Hunter's graduate playwriting program, but she was unable to since she had not graduated with her BA yet.

She made several singing appearances throughout New York, but this part of her career continued to fail to take off completely while on the East Coast.

Career

Robinson held a wide variety of jobs before her career took off: she was a telephone answering service girl; a police dispatcher; an apartment manager; an administrative assistant at a magazine publishing company, a biochemistry laboratory, and a genetics laboratory; a picture framer; a singing telegram girl; and an event planner for a medical non-profit. Her most recent jobs were as a senior technical writer, a graphics designer, and a vice president for Morgan Stanley.

“I always thought it was silly that people with an artistic talent would choose to live in squalor rather than use their talent to get a job to help their family survive. I found a 'real' job writing. There are all kinds of jobs where you can use your talents, make a living, and still do your more artistic work. You don’t have to starve to be good,” she has said.

She was a winner of the Society of Technical Communicators competition in 2007-2008 and 2010-2011, and was asked to judge the competition in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. (2009–2010, she dropped out because of illness.)She is currently the Judging Manager for the compeition.

She had spent over a decade attempting to finish her first novel Ruby, which she pretended to finish while with an abusive partner, claiming later that she did not want him to have part of her proceeds so she finished an atrocious version that she passed off to her agent. Thankfully, this version was rejected.

During a conversation with a friend's ex-wife, she found that there was an open theatre available in Las Vegas but there was no available script nor did the company have the money to buy one. She used this as the catalyst to write "The Sun, the Moon, and The Stars", a musical-in-type play that featured a band of four sisters. While music was used heavily throughout the play, it was not in the usual musical format.

While in San Francisco, she worked several regular jobs while writing and performing as a singer with the bands "Sibling Rivalry" and "The Basics", and performing on television throughout the Bay Area. Her last large performance in San Francisco was as the soprano solo for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony along with David Freiberg from Jefferson Airplane for over 10,000 in attendance at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

She appears in community productions throughout Las Vegas; her last large performance at the MGM Grand for the USA premiere of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" with Golden Rainbow.

Writing

Themes in Robinson's work include class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, Southern traditions, spirituality, betrayal, and family.

Her influences include Jane Hamilton, Dorothy Allison, Hollis Gillespie (for which she named one of her main characters in her first novel, "Ruby"), and Edwidge Danticat.

Personal life

Robinson married Christopher Van Gelder in August 8, 2008, in Snellville, Georgia.

She lives in Henderson, Nevada with her second husband, Chris Van Gelder, and family.

In 2009, after multiple lengthy hospital stays, she was diagnosed with Wegener’s Vasculitis (a.k.a. Wegener's granulomatosis), a rare auto-immune disease.