Cynthia Robinson Young is the author of two chapbooks, Migration (Finishing Line Press, 2018) for which she was named Finalist in the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award, and Reflections of a Feral Mother (Walnut Street Publishing, 2025). Her work has been featured in various journals and magazines, including The Writer’s Chronicle, Poetry South, The Amistad, Grist, The Cutleaf Reader, and Chapter 16. She was also nominated for the Pushcart Prize and “Best of the Net” in 2023.
Cynthia's poems have received recognition in several competitions, having been longlisted in the Sundress Broadside Contest and the Songs of Eretz Poetry Contest. Additionally, she received Honorable Mentions in the Charlotte Lit Writers South Award, the Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award (Writer’s Relief), and the Writers' Digest Top 100 Poetry Contest. An excerpt from her novel in progress was included in the anthology Dreams for a Broken World (Essential Dreams Press, 2022).
Cynthia resides in Chattanooga with her husband, surrounded by eight adult children and 18 grandchildren.
With raw, evocative storytelling and lyrical intensity, Reflections of a Feral Mother is a reckoning and a reclamation; an ode to the mothers who carried us and the children we bear.
“I was incredibly inspired by Young’s ability to use the craft of writing to hold space for black women through history and was moved by the strength and effectiveness of the poems.”
If you are in the Chattanooga area,
pick up a copy at Rêve Coffee and Books
in Hixson!
“‘Why Mama Mae Believed in Magic’ by Cynthia Robinson Young is immediately raw and powerful.”