'Boy from Nowhere' to speak at SUNY Adirondack

QUEENSBURY, New York (Oct. 6, 2025) — Richard Robison Jr. didn’t start working on his best-selling “The Boy from Nowhere” until he was 70 years old, a late start by many accounts. But Robison said he doesn’t regret it.

“I had the life experience to help me understand what I was, to know about myself and the world,” said Robison, who will speak at 12:40 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13, at SUNY Adirondack as part of the college’s Writers Project series. “I don’t know that even if I had time to write in my 30s and 40s if I would have written as well as I would have liked.”

Robison started teaching full time at Erie Community College in his mid-20s and — aside from a creative writing fellowship at University at Albany when he was 31 — was wrapped up in work, family, restoring a “beautiful antique house in the country,” skiing and coaching. “My lifestyle didn’t allow me the time or luxury of being a developing writer when I was younger,” he said.

But with time on his hands during the COVID-19 shutdown and the perspective of age, Robison crafted a memoir that reads like fiction, about being raised on the road, as his family moved from one town to the next.

“We moved 10 times between kindergarten and 10th grade, for no sensible reason,” Robison said. “People thrown into new situations a lot become really good observers; when you’re the outsider, you don’t miss anything, you have to survive.”

“I started writing about how I became the person I am and what transpired to make me feel and to hurt and to be joyful,” he said of “The Boy from Nowhere,” which chronicles from fourth grade on for Robison, as his father chases a better life.

Despite loss and sorrow, there are moments of great joy in the story, as Robison recalls teaching his mother to drive a standard transmission car, finding friendship and discovering pieces of himself.

In the discussion at SUNY Adirondack, Robison will discuss why writers write. “I plan to talk about vulnerability, practicing and reading writing that you like and that you don’t like so you understand why you like what you do,” he said. “If you want to be a writer, understand why, what it means to you and your development.”

Robison will have copies of “The Boy from Nowhere” available for purchase at the event.

All Writers Project events are free and open to the public. The events are held at 12:40 p.m. in the Visual Arts Gallery on SUNY Adirondack’s Queensbury campus. The series continues with:

• Oct. 27: Photographer MaryEllen Hendricks shares images from her “The Thin Places” project. Retired SUNY Adirondack Distinguished Professor of English Kathleen McCoy will discuss her poems inspired by the project.
• Nov. 10: Glens Falls-based playwright and musician Neal Herr will talk about the arts industry, grant funding and his musical “Drag Queen Story Hour: The Musical.”
• Nov. 24: Educator and writer Kathy Fish shares insights on “flash” fiction.
• Dec. 8: Novelist Wendy Chin-Tanner reads from her award-winning novel, “King of the Armadillos,” an imagined retelling of her father’s 1950s struggle with leprosy.
   

Events are also offered live via Zoom and can be viewed at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7977212478?pwd=ZXU5WlpJRXZ1YmZoNFNJak1yYVpSUT09.