Gillian Grassie is an award-winning writer, musician, and coach based in Los Angeles.
Traveling the world with her harp on her back and her heart on her sleeve, she has sold out listening rooms from Sicily to Siberia with a contemporary sound that critics have called “soulful… ravishing… dazzling” (Philadelphia Magazine). She cites Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, Björk, Patty Griffin, Radiohead, and Portishead among her eclectic influences.
Gillian delights in bringing the harp to unexpected spaces and is as comfortable performing at a private gala for HRH Prince Albert of Monaco as she is opening for punk-cabaret artist Amanda Palmer or entertaining a TEDx audience at The NY Times Center, once even playing on a moving train car in Mumbai.
Grammy-winner Marc Cohn called himself, "an instant Gillian Grassie fan," observing, “it’s rare to hear a young singer with such control and understated soulfulness, and even more rare to hear a harp provide such a deep percussive groove. I was immediately captivated by her sound.”
As much a storyteller as she is an artist, Gillian studied Comparative Literature & Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College, and her music is often inspired by literary works, with references to Philip Larkin, Robert Frost, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Faulkner, folktales and myths woven throughout.
Over the years, she has expanded to other forms of empathetic narrative, ghostwriting two memoirs – including a Publishers Weekly Bestseller – and later becoming a WGA screenwriter. An episode of the AppleTV+ series “Best Foot Forward” she wrote with comedian Zach Anner was honored by the Norman Lear Center with a 2023 Sentinel Award for its humanizing portrayal of disability.
Whether in song, screenplay, or group facilitation, much of Gillian’s work is focused on the beautiful and complicated experience of being a spirit in a body and the nuanced relational space between humans.
Her pursuit of deep, authentic connection, compassionate truth, and self-sovereignty has led her to become a Relatefulness facilitator and certified coach.
The containers she creates are spacious, warm, and grounded.
Gillian enjoys elaborate baking projects, dancing Argentine tango, and is a besotted dog-mom to her pitbull rescue, Liadain.
