Robin Oliveira (born 1954) is an American author, former literary editor, and nurse, who is most known for her debut novel, My Name is Mary Sutter, published in 2010. Her second novel, I Always Loved You, was published by Penguin on February 4, 2014.
Oliveira worked in nursing until the birth of her children, when she left work to stay home with them, but when her youngest son entered kindergarten, she decided to try to write a book instead of returning.[4][5]
She went back to school to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2006.[1] She served as assistant editor at Narrative Magazine, and from 2007 through 2011 as fiction editor for the annual literary magazine upstreet.[6]
Oliveira began writing the novel that became My Name is Mary Sutter in 2002. It tells the story of an Albany midwife trying to become a surgeon during the American Civil War. At first, Oliveira admits, the writing wasn't very good, and her writing teacher doubted it could succeed. Rewriting took years, including traveling to Washington, D.C. for extensive research at the National Archives and the Library of Congress.[4][5][7] In 2007, while still in progress, it won the James Jones First Novel Award under the working title The Last Beautiful Day.[1]
