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Introduction
Eden Robinson is a Canadian First Nations author and short story writer of Native American literature, surrounding around fantasy and gothic genres typically in post-colonial settings. She has written three novels Monkey Beach, Traplines and Blood Sports. For her works with Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and Governor General's Literary Award. She also received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Eden Robinson currently resides in Kitimat, British Columbia.

Traplines
Robinson’s critically acclaimed first book, Traplines (1995), is a collection of four short stories. Each story is told from the point of view of an adolescent who endeavors constricting, often oppressive, social constraints on the reservation and in Vancouver. In Traplines Robinson does no overtly challenge stereotypes of First Nations drawing readers into the darkness of her characters’ lives. The collection of short stories won Britain’s Winifred Holtby Prize for the best regional work by a Commonwealth writer. Additionally one of the short stories, Queen of the North, was published in The Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women. Traplines kick started Robinson’s writing career and is often read in high school and university classes.

Blood Sports
Blood Sports (2006), the sequel to Eden Robinson’s novella “Contact Sports” featured in Traplines (1995), is the continuation of cousins Tom Bauer and Jeremy Rieger’s story. The novel is arranged in a multi-narrative non-linear structure compiled of letters, videotape transcripts, and standard narrative. Set five years after the events of “Contact Sports” it revisits the characters’ troubled lives in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside. Tom, now in a relationship with former junkie Paulie Mazenkowski and a new father to their daughter Melody is struggling to secure normalcy for his new family. A series of flashbacks expressed through letters and videotapes reveals how both Paulie and Tom have turned themselves around despite the often dangerous and exploitative situations that manipulative, sociopathic Jeremy had put them in. However, the couple’s involvement in Jeremy’s criminal past is not without consequence- one that threatens to unravel the family. Jeremy’s adversary, a man named Firebug, kidnaps Tom and tortures him while he is held hostage. Eventually Firebug’s gang seizes both Paulie and Melody and detains the entire family in a basement cell. After three days of living in the cell and the electricity gets cut off and the family escapes through a vent. Fleeing to the highway, the family encounters Jeremy riding in a van with Firebug locked in a dog cage inside the vehicle. Jeremy reveals he knew that the family had been taken hostage but didn’t have incentive to save them. The story concludes with Jeremy regaining control over Tom as Tom presumably shoots Firebug dead on videotape.

Monkey Beach
Lisa Marie Hill awakes one morning, has a coffee and finds that her parents are leaving with a search party to find her brother who has gone missing at sea. Lisa does not accompany them at first, but then joins her parents after the fact when she takes her family boat down the BC coast. Disaster strikes and a series of flashbacks teach us about Lisa’s life. She ends up in Vancouver where the partying get’s out of hand. After an important vision she returns to the village in which she was raised. Lisa grows closer with her brother who falls in love with a woman who was raped by another man. Lisa’s brother ends up taking a job with this man and kills him. In the final act Lisa Marie encounters spirits who require offerings of blood.

Style
Eden Robinson often writes in a dynamic and non-linear structure, which blends gothic style with Native American subjects. Her novels Traplines and bloodspots had a gritty and realistic tone. Monkey Beach takes on a mysterious and haunting theme. Supernatural subjects play a significant part in her storytelling. This is a direct reference to classic gothic literature but with an indigenous spin. The environments in which her characters inhabit are often dark and elemental. Her writing arouses feelings of psychological terror in the reader due to haunting nature of her stories.

Influences
Eden Robinson has named Stephen King as one her biggest literary influences. A self-proclaimed book worm, Robinson has shared that between the ages of ten and fourteen she had obsessively read many of the author’s works. At this time the young Robinson claims to have begun writing short stories stating, “I think it was The Shining that made me want to start writing" . She also includes author and poet Edgar Allen Poe as one of her early influences. Poe was introduced to Robinson by her “grade four teacher, Mr. Mung, who absolutely adored Edgar Allan Poe.” In grade school she studied both The Purloined Letter and The Golden Ladybug .  She has also revealed “I was born on the same day as Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton: January 19. I am absolutely certain that this affects my writing in some way". The author has also mentioned various films as having contributed to the development of her aesthetic and cinematic style used in her writings. She specifically notes filmmaker David Cronenberg and his film “Scanners”, highlighting “its infamous exploding head sequence”. Robinson too indicates Sound Garden’s “Blackhole Sun” as influencing her writing.

Critical Response
Reviewers have praised Robinson's unflinching and compelling exploration of the darkest impulses of humanity. Traplines received general praise from critics. In particular, book critic A.L. Kennedy states that Eden Robinson’s work on Traplines is “Unflinching, moving and shockingly, bloodily funny. Robinson offers a raw, muscular, urgent new voice: she writes from the heart.” Thomas King was filled with awe when he wrote, “Eden Robinson is one of those rare artists who comes to writing with a skill and maturity that has taken the rest of us decades to achieve". Robinson burst into the Canadian literary scene with Traplines but her Magnum Opus is the novel Monkey Beach. The Toronto Star claimed that “...we bear witness as she spreads her wings — not one note rings false” The Globe and Mail proclaimed Monkey Beach as "Glorious Northern Gothic...” Distinguished reviewers at the Vancouver Sun newspaper offered praise for both of Eden’s books, stating that "Traplines was acclaimed for its startling blend of reality, brutality and humour - Monkey Beach carries [Robinson's] signature. It does more.." Godfather of the Native American genre Sherman Alexie praised Monkey Beach as being “Tough, tender and fierce.”