Robbi is an Australian award winning artist and writer. She began to write her first book Sunday Best when she was diagnosed with aggressive cancer and she was told she had a 20 percent chance of surviving the next three months of her life. Knowing her youngest children who were three and five wouldn’t remember her if she died, she began to write. That memoir was a winner of the Varuna HarperCollins Manuscript Award. The memoir  Sunday Best was published in 2004 and Women’s Weekly wrote – “One of the best books of the year – I devoured it in two days.”  

She is now the author of 5 books.

For her painting Robbi is a winner of the Footscray Art Prize and in 2021 she was a finalist in the prestigious 66th Blake Prize, the Lethbridge Landscape Small Scale Art Award and the Ravenswood Prize for Women – Australia’s largest prize for women artists and most recently was a finalist in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing.

Of her book, The Secret World Of Connie Starr best selling and acclaimed author Karen Brooks wrote, ‘Connie Starr will set the literary firmament ablaze.’

Of her paintings gallerist  Giorgio Pilla says, ‘Robbi’s success, failures, pain and joy cascade from her work, her fragility and immense talent too.’

Robbi is a lover of cheese, all cheese, any cheese, Wes Anderson films, Blues Music especially Led Zeppelin,  dirty gin martini’s  and more cheese.

She lives in Ballarat, Victoria.

Her paintings can be seen on instagram @artwritebooks and purchased through https://bluethumb.com.au/robbi-neal or by using the contact form on this site.

Her books are published by HarperCollins and are available in bookshops and as ebooks and audio

Robbi is represented by Selwa Anthony Literary Management