Robinson was born Marilynne Summers on November 26, 1943, inSandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Ellen (Harris) and John J. Summers, a lumber company employee.[7][8][9] Her brother is the art historianDavid Summers, who dedicated his bookVision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting to her. Robinson was raised inCoeur d'Alene, Idaho, where she graduated high school.[10][11]
Robinson has written five highly acclaimed novels:Housekeeping (1980),Gilead (2004),Home (2008),Lila (2014), andJack (2020).Housekeeping was a finalist for the 1982Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (US),Gilead was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer, andHome received the 2009Orange Prize for Fiction (UK).Home andLila are companions toGilead and focus on the Boughton and Ames families during the same time period.[15][16]
Robinson is also the author of many nonfiction works, includingMother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989),The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998),Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010),When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012),The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), andWhat Are We Doing Here? (2018).Reading Genesis was released on March 12, 2024. Her novels and nonfiction works have been translated into 36 languages.
In 2009, she held a Dwight H. Terry Lectureship atYale University, where she delivered a series of talks titledAbsence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. In May 2011, Robinson delivered theUniversity of Oxford's annual Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters at the university'sRothermere American Institute. On April 19, 2010, she was elected a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[21] Robinson was selected by the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University to deliver the 2018 Hulsean Lectures on Christian theology. She was the fourth woman selected for the series which was established in 1790. She has been elected a fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford and of Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2023, Robinson received the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus from the University of Washington, the highest honor bestowed upon a graduate of the university.[22]
Robinson has received numerous literary, theological and academic honors, among them the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the 2013Park Kyong-ni Prize, and the 2016Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2021, the Tulsa Library Trust presented her with the Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. Robinson's alma mater, the University of Washington, honored her with their 2022 Alumni Summa Laude Dignata Award.
Robinson has received honorary degrees from over a dozen universities and colleges, starting with Oxford University in 2010 and Brown University in 2012, and followed most recently by the University of Iowa, Yale University, Boston College, Cambridge University, and the University of Portland.
The formerArchbishop of Canterbury,Rowan Williams, has described Robinson as "one of the world's most compelling English-speaking novelists", adding that "Robinson's is a voice we urgently need to attend to in both Church and society here [in the UK]."[24]
On June 26, 2015, PresidentBarack Obama quoted Robinson in his eulogy forClementa C. Pinckney ofEmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In speaking about "an open heart," Obama said:"[w]hat a friend of mine, the writer Marilynne Robinson, calls 'that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.'"[25] In November 2015,The New York Review of Books published a two-part conversation between Obama and Robinson, covering topics in American history and the role of faith in society.[26][27]
Robinson was raised as aPresbyterian and later became aCongregationalist, worshipping and sometimes preaching at theCongregational United Church of Christ in Iowa City.[28][29] Her Congregationalism and her interest in the ideas ofJohn Calvin have been important in many of her novels, includingGilead, which centers on the life and theological concerns of a fictional Congregationalist minister.[30] In an interview with theChurch Times in 2012, Robinson said: "I think, if people actually read Calvin, rather than readMax Weber, he would be rebranded. He is a very respectable thinker."[31]
In 1967 she married Fred Miller Robinson,[32] a writer and professor at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. The Robinsons divorced in 1989.[33] The couple have two sons. In the late 1970s, she wroteHousekeeping in the evenings while they slept. Robinson said they influenced her writing in many ways, since"[Motherhood] changes your sense of life, your sense of yourself."[34]
Robinson divides her time between northern California and upstate New York.
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