[2] As a child, Gíslason worked as a newspaper hawker in Reykjavík before moving to England with his mother, and then to Queensland, Australia several years later.
[2] After Gíslason left secondary school, he travelled to Iceland to meet with his biological father, and eventually made contact with his half-siblings.
[2] Gíslason's first book-length work was The Promise of Iceland (University of Queensland Press, 2011), a memoir focusing on his childhood family situation.
[4] In 2017, Gíslason published Saga Land: The island of stories at the edge of the world (ABC Books/HarperCollins) with co-author Richard Fidler.
[5] The Sorrow Stone (UQP, 2022) is a retelling of the story of a character in Gísla saga, Disa (Þórdís Súrsdóttir), who is forced to flee across Iceland with her son Sindri (Snorri Goði) after a revenge stabbing.