Looking Down at the Stars: Life Beneath the Waves is a collection of essays with the wonder of marine life at their heart, published on 6th November 2025.
In 2022, Christina Riley became an ‘underwater artist in residence’ at the Argyll Coast Hope Spot – a place of incredible natural beauty in Scotland and 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 the 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?
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“As she begins to explore the underwater world in her new role, she increasingly comes across like an aquatic Nan Shepherd, with a desire to ‘look into the sea, not at it’.”
““Christina Riley is a tremendous writer, and a truly gifted observer. Her portraits of the underwater world are vivid and precise, often surprising, always illuminating.””