Kristina Grondahl’s parents both began their careers as writers and journalists. Her mother went on to publish short stories in national magazines, as well as a novel set in Bangkok. Her father worked with the American Embassy in Bangkok, New Delhi and Washington, D.C. Thus, by the time Kristina entered college, she had spent her early years attending a dozen different schools in several countries.

“Home” was the East Coast: Maryland, Ithaca and Westchester County in New York; Princeton, New Jersey, and then, Manhattan. Kristina attended Sarah Lawrence College and spent a summer abroad studying in Florence. She married soon after graduation, and spent the next few years in Taiwan where her husband was studying Mandarin. They lived in a Japanese house - their first son learned to walk on tatami.

She received an M.A. in counseling and her MFT license a few years later. Kristina has been student in the Ridhwan Foundation for several decades. As part of her work with the Foundation, she traveled often to the East Coast, and Europe.

She is working on a sequel to The Toppled Ash. Her poetry has been published in The Sun, and in a Sufi Journal. She has plans to publish further selections of her poetry. 

She has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren.