Welcome

Kristin Gleeson is a USA Today bestselling author, musician and painter, originally from Philadelphia and now living in the West Cork Gaeltacht in Ireland, where she works as a librarian.

She holds a Masters in Library Science and a Ph.D. in history, and is a B.R.A.G. medallion Honoree. Alongside her writing she plays the harp, sings and paints.

Her debut novel, Selkie Dreams, published by Knox Robinson Publishing, tells the tale of Maire McNair setting out for Alaska to escape marriage in 19th century Belfast.

Explore her historical novels, read about the biography Anahareo, A Wilderness Spirit, or browse her past appearances.

Welcome to the corner of the internet belonging to Kristin Gleeson, a writer, musician and painter who was originally from Philadelphia and now lives in the West Cork Gaeltacht in Ireland. The airy, unhurried design of this site mirrors a life spent moving between two shores and many disciplines, with generous whitespace and a single warm accent tone that recalls ink and gouache rather than screen glare.

Her debut novel, Selkie Dreams, published by Knox Robinson Publishing, follows Maire McNair as she sets out for Alaska to escape an arranged marriage in nineteenth-century Belfast. The story carries the salt-and-mist atmosphere of the Atlantic coast, and its themes of longing, flight and transformation echo the selkie legends that recur across Irish and Scottish folklore, where the boundary between human and wild is thin and porous.

Beyond the fiction, the site gathers a body of historical novels grounded in careful research, each one opening a window onto a particular landscape, era and set of customs. The writing is informed by academic training in history, and by years spent working among books and archives, where the daily company of old maps, manuscripts and local records has shaped the kind of questions the stories ask.

Gleeson also shares a biography of Anahareo, a Wilde figure, and publishes a running blog that blends Irish country life with the wider world of books, music and painting. Between the entries there are photographs, paintings and short reflective pieces, a diary in fragments that treats observation as a practice and landscape as something to be read as closely as a page.

Music runs alongside the pen. She plays the harp, sings, and writes songs, and the recordings linked here give a sense of a performer who thinks of melody and narrative as cousins rather than separate crafts. Songs often carry the same themes as the novels: departure, memory, the pull of the sea, the ache of leaving a place that will not quite let go.

Her paintings follow a similar logic, often depicting the beautiful landscape of her adopted home: coastline, mist over water, the particular greens of the Gaeltacht fields. Working in paint and in prose, she returns to the same subjects from different angles, and the result is a portfolio that feels less like a collection of pieces than one long, unfolding argument about place and belonging.

There are also practical pages here for those who want to follow along: a mailing list for occasional news from the author, a calendar of events where readings and appearances take place, and details of library talks, signings and workshops. Readers who enjoy the novels, the songs or the paintings are invited to subscribe, and to keep in touch with work in progress from the west coast of Ireland.