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 (Random) in 2005. She is delighted to be back with UQP for The China Garden (March 2009).

She is currently writing a family memoir, tentatively titled Lost Boys, which traces the lives of her mother, Yvonne, and her brother, Peter, after Peter was snatched from Yvonne's arms on a train when he was just a year old.

This work-in-progress was runner-up in the 2009 Peter Blazey Fellowship. An extract of the memoir appeared in Griffith Review - Hidden Queensland in August 2008.

Kris and her partner, Tony, have five children between them, as well as two grandchildren. She lives in Brisbane.

Kristina has written three books the first published in 2001 "In One Skin".
Kristina Olsson's debut book In One Skin is aptly named for its rich exploration of human vulnerability and the process of change. Essentially a women's story, it is about the relationship between two sisters Elena and Evelyn who, abandoned by their mother in childhood, find the emotional and psychological traumas of their past resurfacing as they struggle to raise children of their own.

This was followed in 2005 by "Kilroy Was Here".
An unflinching true story of how any child can be broken and any woman defeated by a system that punishes rather than corrects - and how a life can be redeemed against impossible odds ..

Kristina's third book "The China Garden" will be launched in march 2009.
The China Garden follows three protagonists over a 2-week period that culminates in a shocking event that affects them all.