Longlisted for the 2025 Highland Book Prize
In 2022, Christina Riley became an ‘underwater artist in residence’ at the Argyll Coast Hope Spot – a place of incredible natural beauty in Scotland also crucial for the health of the world’s oceans. She spent days submerged alongside marine life, before resurfacing to reflect, recreate and recount what she had seen – and the feelings of love, hope and responsibility her experience had evoked in her. The resulting essays, collected in this stunning volume, swim through the kaleidoscope of marine life she found there, from starfish to seagrass to the water itself. What shines through all of them is a sense of wonder that is also a call to action. Looking Down at the Stars asks: how can we harness our feelings of awe at the natural world in order to take better care of it? Christina Riley’s lyrical prose is the perfect guide to this unfamiliar underwater world, brimming with surprises, sunlight and sea stars.
Christina Riley was born in Florida and grew up in Ayrshire on Scotland’s west coast, where she now lives. With a focus on coastal waters, her work draws attention to small details — a particular species, object or place — to shift perspectives and encourage new ways of seeing and experiencing our surroundings, natural and otherwise. She has been longlisted for Canongate’s Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing and her first photobook, The Beach Today, was published by Guillemot Press in 2021.