Kerstin grew up in Germany and travelled the world before settling in Australia, where she now calls tropical Far North Queensland home. She holds a PhD in Italian literature and spent most of her working life as an academic, teaching European languages and Intercultural Communication, in Australia, Italy, the Maldives and on a floating university campus aboard a cruise ship. She is widely published as an academic, including book chapters and a monograph on Italo Calvino. Her travel features have appeared in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times.

Discovering the healing power of writing while going through grief was life-changing, and she now writes a popular monthly newsletter and holds writing and yoga retreats in Bali and Vietnam through a small business she built from scratch, www.writeyourjourney.com. You can also find her at www.kerstinpilz.com, on Instagram at www.instagram.com/kerstinpilz.author/, or watch her TEDx talk on 'The Healing Power of Writing' at www.ted.com.