Category: Blindness and Disability

Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, TV, Writing

INVISIBLE VIOLETS is Available for Pre-Order!

Chrys Buckley

The title says it all.

Cover image of Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley. Words are green against a textured background of different shades of purple. Near the top of the cover, there is an author blurb that reads, "A fierce manifesto about claiming your own story. This book will change you and linger long after the final page." This blurb was written by Tarn Wilson, author of In Praise of Inadequate Gifts.
Cover of Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley

This whole thing about a book of mine getting publishing still feels so surreal, and yet here’s one more step in the book publishing process that makes it more concrete. My book is up on all the sites, available for pre-order.

This collection of personal lyric essays took eons to write, and eons to edit. It went through so many iterations, and I plan to talk through and demystify the steps of the process on here in time.

For now, just know that I’m so proud of this book and each essay within. There is darkness in these essay-songs, but writing was always a joy. Even when it made me cry, which was almost always, because I’m a sap like that. I can’t wait for you to read this collection on MARCH 13th, 2026!

I’m also starting an email newsletter that you can sign up for here for all the authorly updates!

Links to pre-order INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays

Bookshop.org

pre-Order Invisible Violets on bookshop.org

Please support Bookshop.Org or one of your local indie bookstores!

Portland and Pacific Northwest Bookstores

Pre-Order Invisible Violets from Annie Bloom’s Books

PRPre-Order Invisible Violets From Broadway Books

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From Powell’s Books

PRe-Oder Invisible Violets From Darvill’s Bookstore
(starting Dec 12, 2025)

Other Booksellers

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From BOOKS-A-Million

Pre-Order Invisible Violets From Barnes & Noble

pre-Order Invisible Violets From Amazon

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

COVER REVEAL!

Chrys Buckley

The time is here. After rounds of editing, eproofs, print proofs, and another round of proofs, the book is locked in.

I spent all summer going over my book for what felt like a bajillion times. In fact, if I had to read any of it right now, I’d probably run away screaming because I’m SO SICK OF MY BOOK! Good thing there’s a fair amount of time until launch day (March 13th) so it can feel fresh again by then.

In the meantime, now that it’s all locked in, here is the cover:

Cover image of Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley. Words are green against a textured background of different shades of purple. Near the top of the cover, there is an author blurb that reads, "A fierce manifesto about claiming your own story. This book will change you and linger long after the final page." This blurb was written by Tarn Wilson, author of In Praise of Inadequate Gifts.

It’s a typographic cover rather than an image-based one. One thing I’ve learned through this process and my work at Ooligan Press is that covers often look duller in print, and a lot darker. So stay tuned for future reveals. The back cover will be coming soon, and so will an unboxing video when the author copies arrive!

~Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, Writing

Catching Up with Chrys – a Time-Lapse in Taylor Swift Songs

Chrys Buckley

Before my last spate of posts about my publishing journey (on the submission, the award, and the call), it had been over four years since I updated this site. Last I left off, it was the fall of 2020, and I had decided to leave medical school.

A lot has changed since then, so I thought it was high time to catch you all up, bring some continuity to this site, and fill in the plot holes. Anyone who knows me or has read this site before will be unsurprised I’m doing it through songs.

Here we go.

time lapse still of a road going into hills
Continue reading “Catching Up with Chrys – a Time-Lapse in Taylor Swift Songs” →
Blindness and Disability, Music, Pop Culture, Science, Writing

After all the Years that I Stood There on the Sidelines Wishing for Right Now

Chrys Buckley

Sometimes your dreams come true. Your ship finally comes in. You get your turn. This is one of those times for me. I hope this will be the first of many times I get this news. Even if that does come to pass, nothing will ever feel quite like it does right now. I know that, and I’m savoring it, because it still doesn’t feel real.

About a month and a half ago, I did a thing.

Today, I get to tell you that my book manuscript won the Wandering Aengus Press prize for nonfiction, which means MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED!

We haven’t set an exact release date, but are looking at sometime next spring, perhaps next March.

I’ll have a lot of work to do for my book over the next year. I couldn’t be happier to be working with Wandering Aengus Press and their team. I worked on my manuscript, an essay collection, with their due date in mind and didn’t submit it anywhere else.

The contracts are signed, the process is underway, and most days it still doesn’t feel real. I have waited and worked for this since I was a little girl writing stories in my room.

There’s so much more to say. I plan to post lots about the process as it happens, as well as the process that led to this book and this press. So stay tuned for lots more goodies.

For now, I’m just basking in this once-in-a-lifetime feeling of this writer dreams coming true for the first time.

Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Yesterday I Did a Thing

Chrys Buckley
Screenshot of Duosuma Submission Manager showing trail to table and Wandering Angus Press Book Awards submission

Yesterday, on the new moon and the lunar new year, I submitted a full-length book manuscript to the Wandering Aengus Press Book Awards.

The manuscript I submitted is a collection of fourteen personal essays. The topics I explore within the pages are pretty reflective of this site in general but with less Breaking Bad. Not none, mind you, but less. There are essays discussing blindness and albinism and disability, essays about medical school, essays featuring the internet of the early 2000s, essays touching on pop culture in so many forms, essays rooted in land and place. Under the surface, they’re all contemplations of choice and time and memory.

They all, and I do mean all, touch on music in some way. In fact, I have a playlist underway and it is both massive and amazing.

My title, at least for now is

INVISIBLE VIOLETS: An Album of Personal Essays.

In some ways, it’s been in the works for over a decade. In other ways, it took shape over the last two or three. In yet another, it came together over the last eight weeks.

I plan on posting more about the process, as it’s been a wild ride I’d love to share.

But for now, for my first post in over four years, I’m just gonna bask in knowing that I did a thing.

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Creativity Goals Check-In October 11, 2020

Chrys Buckley

goals11Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

  • work on blog at least five days – three.
  • at least fourteen sessions of digitizing old writing – oh boy, I did six.
  • finish disability letter for the school – worked on it, didn’t finish.

Music

Lifestyle

  • sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 203 nights (29 weeks) in a row – yes.
  • write Morning Pages every day – oh no, just two (yesterday and today).
  • don’t look at phone until after Morning Pages – once, just today.
  • do an Artist Date – yes, two actually. As mentioned in this week’s Artist’s Way Reflections column post, I spent an hour listening to music and sorting through my clothes, and I’m counting it. I did one this morning too. I went to “The Differentialists,” a weekly meeting organized by some classmates where we go through and try to figure out medical mysteries, which is aligned with my imaginary life in Week Two of The Artist’s Way of being House. It was the most fun out of any Artist Date I’ve done in a long time.
  • clean my apartment – it’s gotten totally out of control and I have to move in less than a month so yeah – yes, finally. It was really stressing me out.

Reflections on the Week

Continue reading “Creativity Goals Check-In October 11, 2020” →

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Believe You Can – A Virtual Talent Show

Chrys Buckley

believeyoucanflyer

On October 17th, myself and several other blind and visually-impaired performers are taking to the virtual stage to showcase all kinds of talents. There will be singers and musicians and spoken word artists and even, I’m told, a clogging tutorial. I’m not even sure what clogging is, but I’m excited to find out!

For my part of the show, I’ll be reading a prose piece. I’m deciding between two (and both are ones I’ve read at other events). I just have to read both over, pick one, and edit out the swearing. I’m assuming this is a family-friendly audience, while most of my live reading spoken word type stuff has always been among adults.

The event benefits the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania and is part of Meet the Blind Month, which happens yearly every October.

I’m looking forward to sharing my work, and to experiencing the varied talents of the other performers.

Here’s the flyer in link form:
Believe You Can Flyer

And here’s a link for tickets and info:
Believe You Can website

I hope to see you there!

-Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Science

“You’re Not My Homeland Anymore”

Chrys Buckley

Or “So I’m Leaving Out the Side Door” Part Two

Since this post is a sequel to that one, I’m posting the lyric video again.

In “exile” from folklore, Taylor Swift and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver are singing to and about an ex-lover. For me, the song has taken on a totally different, personal meaning.

It’s held steady as my favorite song on folklore (with many others way, way up there, at this moment the next closest has to be “the lakes”) because the whole concept of exile seems to fit my life right now. Even if it’s (semi) self-imposed.

For me the you of the song isn’t an ex, isn’t a lover, isn’t a person at all.

It’s medical school. It’s medical training as a whole. It’s the medical education industrial complex.

“So I’m leaving out the side door”

I’m leaving medical school.

Continue reading ““You’re Not My Homeland Anymore”” →

Blindness and Disability, Writing

(Overdue) Writing Update: Second Place in Kay Snow

Chrys Buckley

KaySnowContestLast month, I posted a much-overdue writing update about being published in Aerial. In continuing that trend, here’s another update that is also long overdue.

Last year, I placed second in the Kay Snow Writing Contest in the category for graduate-level students. I’d previously placed third in Kay Snow nonfiction back in 2013 for an essay. This was the first time I entered since. You do have to wait a couple years to be eligible again (I think two or three) and I gave it six.

The piece I entered was a memoir chapter called “Eclipses of Jupiter” (previously called “Constant Eclipse” on here) a flashback chapter in Moonchild, the memoir project I’m working on (which you can read about in this sketch, and on my Memoir page, and see lots of posts about here).

It was also the chapter I read, so long ago, at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC as part of The Best Memoirists’ Pageant Ever in 2007, which I apparently never posted about back in the day, though I was sure I had (couldn’t find anything in my drafts either). The picture on my bio page comes from that event.

One of these days, I’d love to get published AND paid for a piece of writing. It’s always been one or the other, never both. This was a cash prize, of $100. Plus a free day at the Willamette Writers conference.

I had plans for that. The timing was perfect for the conference last summer. It fell towards the end of an Enrichment Week at medical school, meaning we had to sign up for activities but most of the week was totally open. Meaning that I could go. Meaning that my writing life and my medical student life were brilliantly coalescing for the second time that year. Back in March, the yearly AWP conference had been here, in Portland, on my bus line, perfectly overlapped with my Spring Break. It was all so charmed.

Continue reading “(Overdue) Writing Update: Second Place in Kay Snow” →

Blindness and Disability, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date

Chrys Buckley

Artist DateIn The Artist’s Way, the seminal book on creativity, author Julia Cameron introduces two Basic Tools, after the introduction and before the week-by-week chapters. These two Basic Tools, she says, are the cornerstone to connecting with creativity.

The first is Morning Pages, discussed in last week’s Artist’s Way Reflections column, the practice of writing three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind every morning. I’ve wrestled with these pages, but ultimately find them to be helpful, a way to connect to what I’m actually feeling, which isn’t always easy but is in its own way grounding. They’re also a good source of fresh ideas, a way to puzzle through problems and often a place to dump the mental waste before starting the day.

The second Basic Tool is the Artist Date. You’re supposed to go on a “date” with your artist self once a week. Do something fun for an hour and no one else is allowed to come along. Quality time with your creative side.

And I’m going to be real. I get the theory behind it, it all sounds great when Julia Cameron extols the values of an Artist Date. But in actuality, I hate it.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date” →