Tory
Bilski
I write about Iceland: its people, its horses, and its history.
I write about Iceland: its people, its horses, and its history.
Tory Bilski is a travel writer based in Connecticut. She writes primarily about Iceland: its people, horses, and history.
In 2013 she created an award-winning blog, Icelandica, featuring tales of adventure (and misadventure) with a group of fellow women travelers in Iceland. She has written for Atlas Obscura, Hartford Courant, Roads & Kingdoms, Iceland Review, and others, and published short stories in literary journals including the Kenyon Review, 13th Moon, and the Black Warrior Review, where her story was nominated for a Pushcart.
She graduated from Oswego State and Wesleyan University, and completed a year of her MFA at Sarah Lawrence. She is inexplicably drawn to old Norse and Anglo-Saxon history, and pretends not to believe it's due to very exciting past-life experiences.
A Best Book for Travel Inspiration, 2020 · Travel + Leisure
Each June, Tory Bilski meets fellow women travelers in Reykjavik and heads to northern Iceland, near the Greenland Sea. They escape their ordinary lives to live an extraordinary one at a horse farm perched at the edge of the world, if only for a short while.
When they first came to Thingeyrar, these women were strangers. The one thing they had in common was a passion for Icelandic horses. Over the years their friendships deepen, growing older together and keeping each other young. They leave behind the usual troubles at home (illnesses, aging parents, troubled teenagers, financial worries) and embrace a desire for adventure.
You don’t have to love horses, riding, or Iceland to appreciate this fine memoir. Joan Baum, WSHU Public RadioRead all reviews ›
My next book follows Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, the most travelled woman of the Viking age. She crossed the north Atlantic to Greenland and on to Vinland, gave birth to the first European child born in North America, and late in her life walked to Rome.
The sagas remember her in fragments. I am trying to write her whole.
Read more about the Gudrid book ›
Horses, weather, the odd saga, and word on the next book. No noise, and easy to leave.
Reading with your book club? I join calls. See events ›