Christina Riley
Christina Riley was born in Florida and grew up in Ayrshire on Scotland’s west coast, where she now resides. With a focus on coastal waters, her work draws attention to small details — a particular species, object or place — to shift perspectives and encourage new ways of seeing and experiencing our surroundings, natural and otherwise. Longlisted for Canongate’s Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing, she has recently been published by Gutter, Extra Teeth, The Clearing, Caught by the River, Minding Nature and Little Toller and has presented work at solo and group exhibitions across the UK. Her first photobook, The Beach Today, was published by Guillemot Press in 2021 and her debut non-fiction book, on experiences and encounters underwater in Scotland, will be published in 2025. In 2019 she started The Nature Library, a travelling library exploring the role of literature in times of climate crisis, which opened a long-term premises in 2024.
BUYING OPTIONS
Buy Looking Down at the Stars
Discover the wonder of marine life seen up close in these joyous and sparkling essays.
In 2022, Christina Riley became an ‘underwater artist in residence’ at the Argyll Coast Hope Spot – a place of incredible natural beauty in Scotland also crucial for the health of the world’s oceans. She spent days submerged alongside marine life, before resurfacing to reflect, recreate and recount what she had seen – and the feelings of love, hope and responsibility her experience had evoked in her.
The resulting essays, collected in this stunning volume, swim through the kaleidoscope of marine life she found there, from starfish to seagrass to the water itself. What shines through all of them is a sense of wonder that is also a call to action. Looking Down at the Stars asks: how can we harness our feelings of awe at the natural world in order to take better care of it?
Christina Riley’s lyrical prose is the perfect guide to this unfamiliar underwater world, brimming with surprises, sunlight and sea stars.
REVIEWS OF Looking Down at the Stars
"Christina Riley is a tremendous writer, and a truly gifted observer. Her portraits of the underwater world are vivid and precise, often surprising, always illuminating. Looking Down at the Stars is a book of wonder and delight." Malachy Tallack, multi-award-winning author
