Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan is an American author. His debut novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, was published in 2012.

Robin Sloan
Sloan in 2008
Sloan in 2008
BornUnited States
Alma materMichigan State University
GenreNovels
Notable worksMr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Website
www.robinsloan.com

Early life

Sloan was born to a home economics teacher and an appliance salesman.[1] He grew up in Troy, Michigan, where he attended Wattles Elementary School.[2] He graduated from Athens High School in 1998.[3]

Sloan attended Michigan State University, where he co-founded the literary magazine Oats. He was also a columnist and cartoonist for The State News student newspaper. He graduated in 2002 with a degree in economics from the Eli Broad College of Business.[3] He moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, after graduation for a fellowship at the Poynter Institute. In 2003, he founded the SnarkMarket blog with some friends.[4]

Sloan moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 to work at Current TV as a media strategist/interactive producer.[4][5][6]

Career

Sloan crowdfunded his novella Annabel Scheme in 2009 through Kickstarter. After successfully funding the project, he quit his job at Current to write the novella full time.[7][4] About a thousand copies of the novella were printed and the novella was released under a Creative Commons NonCommercial license.[8]

Prior to working as an author, Sloan worked at Twitter as a media manager, helping news companies condense their reports to Twitter's 140 characters tweet limit.[5]

Sloan's first novel Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore was released in 2012. The story began as a 6,000 word short story published onto Sloan's personal website and Kindle Store.[9][4] The novel was listed in San Francisco Chronicle's list of top 100 books of 2012.[10] It is about a laid-off Silicon Valley tech worker who begins working at a dusty bookstore with very few customers, only to start discovering one secret after another. The mysterious old books, along with the store's owner, lead to a 500‑year‑old secret society.[11]

His second novel Sourdough was released in September 2017.[6] It was listed as one of the San Francisco Chronicle's top 100 books of 2017.[12]

His speculative fiction short story The Conspiracy Museum was published in The Atlantic in May 2020 as part of the "Shadowlands" project exploring conspiracy thinking in the United States.[13]

Sloan and his partner Kathryn Tomajan produce olive oil under the Fat Gold brand. They harvest off of leased land in Sunol, California.[14]

Personal life

Sloan resides in Rockridge, Oakland, California.[1]

Bibliography
  • Annabel Scheme (2010)
  • Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012) ISBN 978-1-92207-916-9
  • Ajax Penumbra 1969 (2013) ISBN 978-0-374-71184-9
  • Sourdough: A Novel (2017) ISBN 978-0-374-20310-8[15]
  • Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate (2020) (Novella; "neither sequel nor prequel to the original Annabel Scheme novella published in 2009".)[16]
  • The Suitcase Clone (2022) ISBN 978-1-25088-265-3[17]

References
  1. Bowles, Nellie (December 12, 2012). "Robin Sloan adds character to tech literature". SFGate. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  2. Sloan, Robin (August 10, 2012). "Robin Sloan's most treasured book". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  3. Anderson, Kristin (April 26, 2002). "Troy Student to Urge MSU Classmates to Keep Building Their Legacies". MSU Today. Retrieved February 24, 2014.
  4. Kimball, Diana (August 16, 2012). "Case Study: Robin Sloan Writes a Book". Kickstarter. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  5. Bilton, Nick (May 12, 2013). "Disruptions: Even the Tech Elites Leave Gadgets Behind". Bits Blog. The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  6. Gartenberg, Chaim (2017-09-06). "Robin Sloan on his new book Sourdough, San Francisco culture, and a more optimistic Silicon Valley". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  7. Lagorio, Christine (November 10, 2009). "Kickstarter pairs creative projects with donors". SFGate. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  8. Cameron (2010-01-14). "Robin Sloan's "Annabel Scheme"". Creative Commons. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  9. Bilton, Nick (October 12, 2012). "One on One: Robin Sloan, Author and 'Media Inventor'". Bits Blog. The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  10. "Best books of 2012: 100 recommended books". San Francisco Chronicle. December 21, 2012. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  11. Maslin, Janet (November 7, 2012). "Google Aces Can't Defeat Bibliophiles 'Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore' by Robin Sloan". New York Times. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
  12. "Best of 2017: 100 recommended books". San Francisco Chronicle. 2017-12-20. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  13. Cushing, Ellen (2020-05-15). "How to Write Science Fiction That Isn't 'Useful'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  14. Fritsche, Sarah (September 24, 2018). "California olive oil producers fall short after 'borderline catastrophic' harvest". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  15. "Publishers Weekly". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
  16. Robin Sloan (2020). "Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate". RobinSloan.com. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  17. "The Suitcase Clone". goodreads. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
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