About

Kristina Hallfríður is a novelist whose work sits where science meets story. She descends, some thirteen generations back, from the man who brought the first printing press to Iceland in the 16th century, a writer who left a great deal behind him, and lost his head not long after. She has always suspected she inherited his inclination toward the page, if not, she hopes, his ending.

Before turning to fiction, she trained as a biologist, advised on biochemical decontamination in Washington, DC, and spent a decade as a vice president in advertising. She now regards that path as a single long apprenticeship in the two things fiction demands: a close study of how people endure under pressure, and the craft of making a reader feel it.

In 2024 she committed fully to writing. She learned Icelandic, studied in Reykjavík, and completed the Stanford Novel Writing Program. She is now at work on her debut novel, Let Theirs Be Light, which tells the true story of an extraordinary 19th‑century Icelandic woman whom history discarded and this novel restores.