Kristina was born in 1956 and raised in Brisbane of Swedish and Australian heritage. She studied journalism at the University of Queensland and went on to write for The Australian, The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail, the Sydney Sunday Telegraph and Griffith Review.She has also worked as an advisor to government and as a teacher of creative writing and journalism at tertiary and community level. She supervises and mentors several post-graduate writing students and also works as a manuscript assessor and editor.University of Queensland Press published her first novel, In One Skin, in 2001. This was  followed by Kilroy Was Here  in 2005 and The China Garden in 2009. Boy, Lost, a family memoir, was published by UQP in March 2013.Kristina has two adult children, as well as three grandchildren. She lives in Brisbane.