Robert Woodbine

Dr. Robert J. Woodbine grew up in Harlem and the South Bronx amidst the social and economic upheaval of the 1960s. The glaring inequities he experienced between the devastation of heroin's affects in the the Black and Hispanic community compared to the relatively opulent lifestyles he witnessed while attending the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut fueled an intense inner need to creatively express the resultant anger, frustration, and pain he wrestled with.

During this period, his father introduced him to LeRoi Jones' The Dead Lecturer. Coupled with Jean Toomer's Cane, the works of E. E. Cummings, and inspired by avant-garde jazz, his fledgling creative expressions were formed. No longer fettered by the restrictive requirements of traditional writing forms, he explored his growing sociopolitical awareness through creative writing and performance.

In the 1970s, Dr. Woodbine was a member of Sonia Sanchez's year-long Harlem Writers Workshop and was mentored by and performed with Roxbury's renown musician poet, Robert Ruff. Most recently, he was co-author of Sun Chasers--A Novel with Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming and edited and wrote a foreword to Dr. Yang's Dao De Jing--A Qigong Interpretation. Currently, he is a member of the historic Harlem Writers Guild.