Kristina Widman was born in Örebro, where her father was a dentist and her mother was the writer Irma Sankt Cyr Jonsson. Her maternal grandmother’s brother was Hjalmar Bergman. The year after completing her upper secondary schooling in 1948, she married the museum official Dag Widman. After studying art history at Uppsala, she became a library assistant at Stockholm Public Library and at the start of the 1970s undertook study travels to Paris. She also worked as a secretary with the Swedish Defence Staff and married for the second time in 1989. She has three children.
She made her debut with Rönnträden (SS), 1957. Her personal style is probably best represented in her short story collection Ett glas Campari from 1965. Through her new interest in psychology and psychiatry, she tells the stories in a special, transparent way and with a melancholic aftertone.