Bio

Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she’s legally blind. Chrys has bachelor’s degrees in Arts & Letters, Micro/Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry. She endured approximately ¾ of medical school before breaking free to focus on writing and disability advocacy.

Chrys is currently in the Book Publishing graduate program at Portland State University, pursuing concentrations in Book Editing and Book Design. Chrys is the manager of the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press.

Chrys’s nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. She was a finalist (twice) in MTV’s “I’m from Rolling Stone” writing contest. She has won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship and the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature. Her debut collection Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is forthcoming from Wandering Aengus Press after winning their nonfiction book award in 2025.

Chrys writes short stories, longer fiction, screenplays, TV scripts, personal essays and memoir. Her public readings include Open Mic nights, live storytelling events, and “The Best Memoirists Pageant Ever” at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC.

When she’s not writing, doing grad school classwork, or working at Ooligan Press, she’s a part-time chemistry and biology tutor, and has a special fondness for organic chemistry. She’s also worked as a writing coach, copy-editor, fiction writing teacher, and tarot card reader.

Chrys’s first rule of writing is to be real, raw and “ruthless with truth.”

Chrys lives, works, walks, and writes in Portland, where she spends way too much time rewatching well-loved shows (at the time of this latest update, that show is Castle), reading too many books at once (such is grad school), listening to music and singing along as she writes, and hoarding lyrics and memories.