Robinson was raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She attended Richard J. Reynolds High School, where she began her first novel, Seven Ways We Lie. She is an alumna of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she majored in economics, graduating in 2016. Her debut novel was published before she graduated. While at Kenyon, Robinson won the college's James E. Michael Playwriting Award for her play Mourning Sickness.

Robinson worked from Chicago as writing apprentice for the satirical media outlet The Onion. Her three novels are Seven Ways We Lie (2016), Note Worthy (2017), and Final Draft (2018), all published by Amulet, an imprint of Abrams Books.

Robinson is bisexual, of half-Irish and half-Chinese descent, and the characters in her novels similarly lie "in the middle of a spectrum rather than out at the ends".
Where did Riley Redgate sarted her first novel?
Riley Redgate started her first novel while attending Richard J. Reynolds High School.