Author’s Biography

Born in Texas and raised in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) of Georgia, USA, Christina E. Petrides lived and worked in Washington, DC (2003-2013), and on Jeju Island, Republic of Korea (2017-2023), before returning to the CSRA.

Her first children's book, Blueberry Man, was published in 2020 by Tchaikovsky Family Books (Jeju Island, South Korea). 블루베리 맨, the Korean translation of Blueberry Man, was published in 2021. Christina’s second children’s book, The Refrigerator Ghost, was first published in Korean translation as 냉장고 유령 by Kong Books (Seoul, South Korea) in 2022. Christina and Tchaikovsky Family Books collaborated again on her third children’s book, Tea Cakes, Quilts, and Sonshine, issued in Fall 2022. Christina is currently overseeing the illustration of her fourth children’s book, Mr. Fisher’s Whiskers, which is slated to be published by Cep Books, the company which published the English version of The Refrigerator Ghost in late 2023.

Scores of Christina’s poems have been published in English by periodicals (online and print) around the world since she began writing verse in 2018; a handful have been translated into Russian. In late 2022, Kelsay Books (USA) published On Unfirm Terrain, Christina’s first book-length volume of verse (a collection of previously-published pieces augmented by new work).

While she was enrolled in the Russian history doctoral program at Georgetown University, Christina co-translated Maria Shelyakhovskaya’s Утверждение в любви. История одной семьи. 1872-1981 (Being Grounded in Love: A History of One Russian Family, 1872-1981), into English manuscript. Being Grounded in Love was published in August 2023 by Three String Books, an imprint of Slavica Publishers (USA).

Christina continues to create stories for children, update her Substack (writing for adults), and conduct independent historical research. In particular, she is currently revising her 180,000-word journal about her undergraduate trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1995 (whether this is published as creative nonfiction or morphs into a novel has yet to be determined), and her 2001 International Studies MA thesis (University of South Carolina) about the plunder of cultural valuables in light of events in the Baltic States and Ukraine. She also freelances as a Russian-English translator and as an editor (particularly for books and essays in English by writers who primarily speak other languages).

Christina periodically updates her Amazon.com author page and Goodreads.com author page with her latest books.