Thomas Eugene Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025) was an American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies" (also known as "comedy dramas"). Robbins had lived in La Conner, Washington, since 1970, where he wrote nine of his books. His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into the 1993 film version by Gus Van Sant. His last work, published in 2014, was Tibetan Peach Pie, a self-declared "un-memoir".

Robbins was born on July 22, 1932, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to George Thomas Robbins and Katherine Belle Robinson. Both of his grandfathers were Southern Baptist preachers. The Robbins family lived in Blowing Rock before moving to Warsaw, Virginia, when the author was still a young boy. In adulthood, Robbins described his young self as being a "hillbilly".

Robbins attended Warsaw High School (class of 1949) and Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia, where he won the Senior Essay Medal. The next year he enrolled at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, to major in journalism, leaving at the end of his sophomore year after being disciplined by his fraternity for bad behavior and failing to earn a letter in basketball.

In 1953, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after receiving his draft notice, spending a year as a meteorologist in Korea, followed by two years in the Special Weather Intelligence unit of the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska. He was discharged in 1957 and returned to Richmond, Virginia, where his poetry readings at the Rhinoceros Coffee House led to his gaining a reputation on the local bohemian scene.

In late 1957, Robbins enrolled at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), a school of art, drama, and music, which later became Virginia Commonwealth University. He served as an editor and columnist for the college newspaper, Proscript, from 1958 to 1959. He also worked nights on the sports desk of the daily Richmond Times-Dispatch. After graduating with honors from RPI in 1959 and indulging in some hitchhiking, Robbins joined the staff of the Times-Dispatch as a copy editor.

In 1962, Robbins moved to Seattle to seek an M.A. at the Far East Institute of the University of Washington. During the next five years in Seattle (minus a year spent in New York City researching a book on Jackson Pollock) he worked for the Seattle Times as an art critic. In 1965, he wrote a column on the arts for Seattle Magazine as well as occasionally for Art in America and Artforum. Also during this time, he hosted a weekly alternative radio show, Notes from the Underground, at non-commercial KRAB-FM, Seattle. It was in 1967, while writing a review of the rock band The Doors, that Robbins said he found his literary voice. While working on his first novel, Robbins worked the weekend copy desk of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Robbins would remain in Seattle, on and off, for the following forty years.

In 1966, Robbins was contacted by Doubleday's West Coast editor, Luthor Nichols. Nichols asked Robbins about writing a book on Northwest art. Instead Robbins told Nichols he wanted to write a novel and pitched the idea of what was to become Another Roadside Attraction. In 1967, Robbins moved to South Bend, Washington, where he wrote his first novel. In 1970, Robbins moved to La Conner, Washington, and it was at his home on Second Street that he subsequently authored nine books (although, in the late 1990s, he spent two years living on the Swinomish Indian reservation). In the 1980s and early 1990s, Robbins regularly published articles and essays in Esquire magazine, and also contributed to Playboy, The New York Times, and GQ.

Robbins's 1982 contract with editor Alan Rinzler stipulated that he would accompany Robbins on three holiday trips to resorts Robbins would choose where he could discuss the work-in-progress novel. Rinzler later discovered it was Jitterbug Perfume. He later wrote this on the topic of editing for Robbins: