Nadine Bjursten's career began unconventionally soon after she graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, (where she spent many a free afternoon in a helicopter taking black-and-white photos of the city). She was about to start work at a publication in New York but something stopped her. She spoke with some cultural magazines, and before she knew it, she was landing in La Paz, Bolivia, where she would remain for a couple of years, working her way up to become editor-in-chief of Bolivian Times.

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From there she has headed diverse publications in New York and Washington, DC, from DM News to Arms Control Today, including two years at the Global Security Institute where she learned about the security challenges facing our world.

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She spent the last twelve years raising her twin girls while researching, writing, and traveling to such countries as Iran and Russia. 

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She is the author of Half a Cup of Sand and Sky, The Point Where the Light Breaks, and The Birdmaker of Moscow. Half a Cup of Sand and Sky, formerly By These Limbs, was a finalist for the Pen Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and longlisted for both the Bath Novel Award and the Mslexia Novel Competition. The Point Where the Light Breaks came in second place in the Geneva Literary Prize.