Christina Marsden Gillis's work has been published in such diverse publications as House Beautiful, Death Studies, Journal of Medical Humanities, Raritan, Island Journal, Hotel Amerika, Bellevue Literary Review, and Southwest Review. Immersing herself in a specific place and teasing out the region's history, lore, and ecology, she considers herself an environmental writer who focuses on the spirit of a place, its human and natural interconnections.

In a series of powerful essays In Where Edges Don't Hold, Gillis shares with readers insights derived from spending every summer of her adult life on Gotts Island, off the coast of Maine.

Gillis received her doctorate in English with an emphasis in eighteenth-century literature and was the founding associate director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley. Her previous book, Writing on Stone, explores her special relationship with Gotts Island following the death of her son in a tragic accident.