Photo by Kalie Reid

Short bio

Christina Collins grew up in Massachusetts and lives in Northern Ireland, where she’s always on the lookout for secret gardens and castle ruins. She is the author of two middle-grade novels, After Zero and The Town with No Mirrors. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast and an MFA from George Mason University, both in creative writing.

Longer bio

Christina Collins grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, devouring library books, looking for secret gardens, and using “wicked” as an adverb. She has lived in England, as a visiting student at the University of Oxford, and in Northern Virginia, where she earned her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. Nowadays she lives in Northern Ireland, where she earned her PhD in creative writing from Queen’s University Belfast. Over the years, she has worked in editorial roles, taught at universities, and been to 22 countries and counting.

She is the author of two middle-grade novels published by Sourcebooks Young Readers: After Zero and The Town with No Mirrors. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in more than a dozen periodicals and anthologies and have been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Christina received the inaugural C.S. Lewis Writer's Bursary award from EastSide Arts in 2021 and has held residencies at the Irish Writers Centre (Roaming Writer-in-Residence), the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Art Commune program in Armenia. She is represented by Becky Bagnell of the Lindsay Literary Agency.