In 2015, Robbins, with assistance from the Virginia War Memorial, founded 'The Mighty Pen Project,' a university-style writing class offered at no cost to veterans to encourage and teach them to share their stories. Podium holds weekly after-school, in-school, and summer programs and publishes both a quarterly zine and annual journal composed of students’ work. Podium is a grassroots non-profit organization that provides youth in the Greater Richmond Metropolitan Area with the skills to become confident and capable readers, writers, and communicators. In 2008, he and friend Lindy Bumgarner started The Podium Foundation, with Robbins as the fledgling organization's first chair and Bumgarner as Executive Director, a role she filled until 2019 when she joined the marketing team of the Richmond area YMCA. Robbins became interested in creating opportunities for underserved students in Richmond Public Schools through creative expression and writing. Since its founding, the nonprofit organization has held literary contests, newsletters, and a yearly conference as well as exposing readers to contemporary authors who come to speak. The original board included other Richmond writers and members of the literary community, including Dean King, Tom De Haven, and Phaedra Hise, to encourage creative expression in the Richmond area. Robbins founded James River Writers in 2002. He followed that up with a decade teaching advanced creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Honors College, then the VCU Art School. In 2007, Robbins returned to William & Mary, this time as the Writer in Residence. With its publication, and his subsequent novels, Robbins was able to become a full-time novelist. He spent two months traveling in the Soviet Union to research the novel which became his first bestseller in 1990, War of the Rats. He did not devote his time to writing fiction until 1988 when he discovered the true-life duel between the top Soviet and German snipers at the battle of Stalingrad. He spent one year practicing environmental law in South Carolina then turned to freelance writing.

in Theater and Speech from the College of William and Mary in 1976, then his Juris Doctor from the same school four years later. The son of two World War II veterans, David Lea Robbins was born on March 10, 1954, in Richmond, VA. He founded the Richmond-based Podium Foundation. Robbins (born 1954) is an American author of several historical fiction novels, and a co-founder of the James River Writers.

War of the Rats by David L. Robbins