Hi, my fellow marathoners!
My name is Julie Christiansen, (pen name Robbie West) I know that pen names can be tricky things. The two things I have published under my pen name have been a poem in the 2021 Poetry Marathon Anthology and and a ten-word story in the Potato Soup Journal. I am very proud of this small achievement, although I sometimes wish that it belonged to my real name. The reason I give for sticking to the pen name is so that I can keep my creative writing separate from my academic writing. But since I am not famous and I publish only a little bit of both categories, a pen name is quite unnecessary. The real reason why I will stick to the name of Robbie West is that it is in fact my real name. I was adopted as a baby by Jack and Shirley Christiansen, and at the ripe old age of 58, I finally met my birth parents; Nancy Robson and Ed West. Both names are meant to acknowledge the people who have had an impact on my life – my parents and well, my parents.