Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan is an American novelist born in 1979 who worked in media and technology, including roles at Current TV and Twitter, before turning to fiction full time. His debut novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), follows a laid-off web designer who takes a job at a mysterious San Francisco bookstore and uncovers a centuries-old secret society, and was named to the San Francisco Chronicle's list of the year's top books. He continued with Sourdough (2017), about a software engineer who inherits a sentient sourdough starter, and Moonbound (2024), a far-future fantasy. Sloan crowdfunded his early novella Annabel Scheme via Kickstarter in 2009 before quitting his job to write; he lives in Oakland, California, where he also produces olive oil under the Fat Gold label.