ristina Nehring is an award-winning essayist, scholar, travel writer and memoirist known for her spirited and contrarian reflections on issues as diverse as dating and drinking, Shakespeare, love poetry and intellectual snobs.

Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Atlantic, Harper’s, Slate, The London Times, Condé Nast Traveler, The American Scholar, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, New Republic and New York Magazine. She has pursued graduate studies at Stanford and the Sorbonne, and holds a literature Ph.D. from UCLA.

In October 2023, Cristina is publishing The Child Who Never Spoke; 23 1/2 Lessons in Fragility with Heliotrope Books.

In 2009, Cristina published A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century, which draws on cultural figures from Socrates to Simone de Beauvoir to propose more daring and imaginative models for modern love. In attacking pieties from the cult of safe sex to the assumption that self-respecting feminists should not also be headstrong romantics, Cristina made a lot of enemies. She also made friends: Vindication (which take its name from Mary Wollstonecraft’s 18th-century Vindication of the Rights of Woman) was hailed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review as “fierce and lively… one of those rare books that could change the way we think about our intimate lives.”

In 2010, Cristina’s life and career took an unexpected turn when her newborn was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia as well as Down Syndrome. Journey to the Edge of the Light: a Tale of Love, Leukemia and Transformation recounts their harrowing–but ultimately inspiring–travels through Pediatric Chemo-land. Mother and daughter now live in Paris, France.

Cristina has subsequently published two books in French: L’Amour a L’Americaine: Une Nouvelle Police des Sentiments. Its contrarian proposals about love created much commotion in the French journalism world.

She has also published a book of aphoristic essays inspired by her child: 23-et-demi: Les Aventures d’une Mere, d’une Fille et d’un Chromosome Surnumeraire.