Dana Robbins, Biography
After graduating from Wellesley College with a B.A. in History, Dana Robbins received
a J.D from Columbia University and practiced law unhappily for 28 years. When she could stand it no longer, she retired and moved to Portland Maine where she pursued a lifelong interest in poetry in the Stonecoast Writers program, graduating January 2013 with a MFA. Dana’s first book “The Left Side of My Life” was published by Moon Pie Press of Westbrook, Maine in 2015. Her second book, After the Parade was published by Moon Pie in 2020.
Dana’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Drunken Boat, Museum of
Americana, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Calyx, the Paterson Literary Review, Cape Rock Magazine, the Jewish Women’s Literary Annual and Poetica Magazine A number of Dana’s poems have won awards, including “The Apple Tree” which received an honorable mention in the Fish Poetry Contest and appears in the 2013 Fish Anthology and “The Butterfly Dress,”
which won third Prize in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Contest for Jewish Poetry. Dana’s poem
“To My Daughter teaching Science” was selected by Garrison Keillor and read on the Writers
Almanac. Dana has read her work in numerous venues including the late beloved Cornelia Street
Café, Lowry’s Lodge in Westbrook, Maine and the Dingle Book Store in Dingle, Ireland.
Dana had a stroke at the age of twenty three and writes poems and essays about healing
though poetry and what it is like to have a disability. Her work on this subject has appeared in
The Examined Life Journal of the Carver College School of Medicine of the University of Iowa
and the journal of disability writing, Wordgathering.com. Dana aspires to help others and raise
awareness about disability through her work, and is available to speak on the subject of
disability, creativity, and healing.
Dana is the adoring and proud mother of her two grown daughters, Miriam Olenick,
psychotherapist and Liat Olenick, teacher/activist, as well as her lovely bonus children, Matt
and Naomi Gleit, and darling grandchildren James and Olivia (“Ia”) Gleit. Dana lives in Bronx,
NY and Palo Alto, California, with her dear husband, Stephen Gleit.