Christina Thompson

Christina Thompson works at Harvard University, where she is the editor of Harvard Review and a writing instructor at Harvard University Extension. She is the author of two books about the Pacific: Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which looks at the history of Polynesian voyaging, and Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, a memoir. Sea People, which was published in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan, won the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and the NSW Premier's General History Award, and was shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (US) and the Mountbatten Maritime Award (UK)

A dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia, Christina has lived on both sides of the Pacific, as well as in Hawai’i, and has traveled widely in the islands. She lives with her husband, a New Zealander and member of the Ngati Rehia hapu of the Ngapuhi iwi, and three sons outside Boston and travels to the Pacific as often as she can. Her current book project tells the story of the second great wave of Polynesian voyagers, who explored the world in the early nineteenth century as sailors and passengers on European ships.