This blog is by writer and academic Dr Kári Gíslason, Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.
My writing began in travel literature - and you'll find past travel pieces listed under Publications - but has also included memoir (my first book, The Promise of Iceland (2011) is a travel memoir about family and my birthplace Reykjavik), fiction, as well as scholarly work on medieval Scandinavian literature, creative writing pedagogy and craft, authorship theory, and reviewing.
In 2015, I published a second book, the novel The Ash Burner, and in 2016 was co-creator (with Richard Fidler) of the radio series Saga Land. Richard and I went on to publish a book together, Saga Land: The island of stories at the edge of the world (2017). My fourth book was an historical novel set in Iceland, The Sorrow Stone, published by UQP in March 2022. Most recently, I have published a memoir of fatherhood set on the Greek island of Corfu, called Running with Pirates (2024).
My current projects are a crime novel, and a scholarly text that investigates the potential of creative practice to form a research method in Old Norse-Icelandic studies.
