Dr Kerstin Pilz grew up in Germany and travelled extensively before making Australia her home, where she now lives in the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland. She holds a PhD in Italian literature and spent much of her career in academia, teaching European languages and intercultural communication in Australia, Italy, the Maldives, and on a floating university campus aboard a cruise ship.
Kerstin is a widely published academic, with book chapters and a monograph on Italo Calvino among her works. Her travel writing has appeared in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The New York Times. More recently, she published her memoir, Loving My Lying, Dying, Cheating Husband (Affirm Press, 2024).
In mid-life, she discovered the healing power of writing, a turning point that inspired her move to Vietnam and the creation of a small business teaching writing, yoga, and sound healing after completing teacher training in Nepal in 2016.
When the pandemic brought her back to Australia, she became co-director of transformational writing retreats with Queensland author Edwina Shaw, offering creative writing and yoga retreats in Bali, Hoi An, Tuscany, and Byron Bay.