Robinson was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho and completed her undergraduate education at Pembroke College, where she received her B.A. magna cum laude in 1966. She also received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977.

Robinson is the author of four highly acclaimed novels and received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 and the National Humanities Medal in 2012. Her novel Housekeeping (1980) was the first book chosen for the statewide "Idaho Reads" project in 2001.