Rising Star Spotlight: Kate Robbins

First, tell us about Newfoundland!  Were you born and raised there or have you transplanted from somewhere else? If so from where? Newfoundland is the island portion of the most easterly Canadian province of Labrador. In fact, it’s the most easterly location in North America. Having said that, it’s an island in the brisk North Atlantic Ocean and, as you can imagine, makes for interesting weather.Newfoundlanders are a proud people who long ago developed a rich musical, written, and oral storytelling culture. Because we are so isolated, many of the original dialects from the original European settlers remain in our outports. Some regions, like the Southern Shore with its Irish accent, maintain a century’s old language and inflections only found in pockets of the UK today.I was born and raised on the east coast of Newfoundland, with Scottish and English heritage and my ‘haccent’ is a combination of Notre Dame Bay—“I’ll get some feesh (fish) off the warf (wharf)”—and Trinity Bay—“Vanesser (Vanessa) threw ‘er happle (apple) in the rivah (river)”.Needless to say, dialects fascinate me, and because I listen for them so much, I find them distracting in things I read. That’s why I don’t use any dialect in my Scottish historicals.When I finished high school, I left my tiny outport of Hatchet Cove and, like so many others, carved out a life for myself in the province’s capital city, St. John’s—the oldest in North America. It’s a glorious fusion of old European and modern amenities, with the richest of the rich living alongside the poorest of the poor. There’s inspiration for stories on every street corner and on every cobblestone street.

Read the entire interview in the February 2017 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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