Robinson was raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She attended Richard J. Reynolds High School,[1] where she began her first novel, Seven Ways We Lie.[2] She is an alumna of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she majored in economics,[1] graduating in 2016.[3] Her debut novel was published before she graduated.[2] While at Kenyon, Robinson won the college's James E. Michael Playwriting Award for her play Mourning Sickness.[2]
Robinson worked from Chicago as writing apprentice for the satirical media outlet The Onion.[4][5] Her four novels are Seven Ways We Lie (2016), Noteworthy (2017), Final Draft (2018),[6] and Look No Further (2023), all published by Amulet, an imprint of Abrams Books.,[7][8][9] and Alone Out Here (2022),[10] published by Disney-Hyperion.[11]
Robinson is bisexual, of half-Irish and half-Chinese descent, and the characters in her novels similarly lie "in the middle of a spectrum rather than out at the ends".[12]
Pen name
Robinson choose the pseudonym Riley Redgate when she was 16 years old, brainstorming it with the help of other members of a writers' forum. Her composition criteria consisted of three things: she wanted to keep her real initials; something gender neutral; and something easily pronounceable.[13]
