Christine Grillo

Christine Grillo reports on food systems, agriculture, climate change, and urban life while also writing and editing fiction. Her nonfiction has appeared in New York Times, The Atlantic’s CityLab, Audubon, Real Simple, and other publications, while her short fiction has appeared in literary journals. Hestia Strikes a Match is her debut novel, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2023; Picador subsequently issued another edition. Set during an imagined second American civil conflict, it follows Hestia Harris as she rebuilds ordinary life in Baltimore through work, friendship, and tentative dating. The book uses speculative circumstances and comic observation to ask how personal connection survives political division. Grillo studied at Columbia University and completed a master’s degree through the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Hestia Strikes a Match brings her journalistic interest in systems and communities into literary fiction, grounding national instability in workplaces, family disagreements, and the sustaining friendship between Hestia and Mildred.