Tag: Portland State University

My Books, Writing

Invisible Violets – How to Get Signed and Personalized Books

Chrys Buckley
Chrys Buckley signing advanced reader copies of her book Invisible Violets at the Wandering Aengus Press booth at Portland book fest

Since announcing the release of my debut book, Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays, which releases on March 13, 2026 from Wandering Aengus Press, people have asked me how they can get signed books.

I have answers for you!
And not just signed books, but also personalized!

It’s a bit of a Choose Your Own Adventure depending on where you live, and so this post serves as your answers for every scenario. Whether you live near me or far away, I have ways to get signed books to you.

Chrys Buckley signing advanced reader copies of her book Invisible Violets at the Wandering Aengus Press booth at the Portland Book Fest

How to Get Signed Books in Portland, Oregon

There are lots of ways to get signed books in the City of Roses:

  • Join me at my launch party on March 13, 7-8:30 p.m. at BOLD Coffee and Books. There will be a conversation about the book. There will be the reading of excerpts from the book. There will be food and drinks available for purchase before and during the event, as is always the case at BOLD. And there will be book signing. You can buy the book at the event and get it signed on the spot. This will be an easy way to get a signed book and it will be a blast!
  • Come to one of my other local events and buy a book and have me sign it! A whole bunch of different events are in the works, and I’m working on creating an Events page to keep it all in one place. Suffice it to say, there will be other opportunities outside of the launch.
  • Pre-order my book (pre-order hub here) and bring your copy to any of my events or coordinate meeting up with me in person outside of events to have me sign it.

How to Get Signed Books on Orcas Island and in Seattle

Along with local events, I’m working on some Orcas and Seattle events as well.

Orcas Island: Plans aren’t definite yet, but I’m working on two separate trips for bookish events on the island. One will be in June 2026 and will be an event with my publisher and other authors at the press, details TBD. Another will be next winter, January 2027 or so, and will be more focused on my book and its many mentions of life on Orcas.

Seattle: This is a bit more ephemeral, but would likely be coupled with the Orcas trips, either on my way there or on my way back. Details TBD. My dream is to do an event at Easy Street Records in West Seattle.

For either of these locations, you could either buy the book at the event or pre-order the book and bring it to the event for me to sign.

How to Get Signed Books if You Live in the United States outside of the Pacific Northwest

Most of my inquiries so far have come from people in this category. This is for you if you:

  • Went to high school with me in New Jersey
  • Went to blind camp (or JKRC or Avalon or Drew) with me in New Jersey
  • Went to Washington College with me for a brief time
  • Went to Northern Arizona University with me for a brief time
  • Know me from a certain internet forum (iykyk)
  • Know me from Camp Orkila and don’t live in the Pacific Northwest
  • Went to medical school with me and went outside the PNW for residency and/or practice
  • Know me from social media or this website/blog
  • Don’t know me at all

To make this available to people in places I’m not likely to travel to in the near future, I’ve partnered with local bookstore Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village, and they will be my hub for signed and personalized books.

Here’s how to get signed books through Annie Bloom’s Books:

  • Order Invisible Violets from them using this direct link to my Signature Page.
  • In your Order Comment at checkout, write these things:
    • You are requesting a signed copy or a personalized copy.
    • What name you want it personalized to.
    • A quick note about how you know me, if you do, so I can write a more personalized note. This is especially helpful if you have changed your name since we knew each other most, or if I know you mostly by a screen name.
    • Your order comment could read something like this. “Requesting personalized copy, addressed to X. This is so-and-so from such-and-where.”
  • Then I’ll go in and sign and personalize and Annie Bloom’s will ship to you.

Note: This is for shipping to US addresses only! Which brings me to…

Chrys Buckley signing advanced reader copies of Invisible Violets at the Wandering Aengus Press booth at the Portland Book Fest

How to Get Signed Books at the NOAH Conference (Columbus, OH)

This isn’t a done deal yet, but I’m thinking of going to the NOAH Conference this summer, and will update here with details as plans progress. If I go, I’ll definitely bring books with me to sell and sign!

How to Get Signed Books if You Live Outside the US

If you want a signed copy of my book and you live outside of the US, you can buy the book from me directly, via Venmo or what have you, which will have to include the shipping costs, and I’ll sign or personalize and mail it to you. You can always reach out to me via my Contact Form if you need to set this up.

I think I have covered every earthly possibility for getting signed books to everyone who wants one. If you have questions or need help with any of the methods, reach out to me here!

Chrys

Chrys Buckley signing advanced reader copies of Invisible Violets at the Wandering Aengus Press booth at the Portland Book Fest

Image description: four photos of Chrys Buckley signing advanced reader copies of Invisible Violets at the Wandering Aengus Press booth at Portland Book Fest.

Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Time Travel: Creative Monsters and Champions

Chrys Buckley

task7Today’s column will cover the Time Travel tasks from Week One. Next week, we’ll move on to Week Two. You can find the full schedule for the rest of the year at the bottom of this post!

I decided to pull out the Time Travel tasks (Tasks 3-7, so most of them) from Week One in their own post for a couple of reasons. One was to be able to ease in, pacing-wise, by spreading Week One out over two weeks here.

Sometimes starting (or restarting) The Artist’s Way can feel a bit like thawing out something frozen, and there’s something painful and scary about that. It can be like melting something that solidified inside you. And it’s not easy.

To me, these Time Travel tasks feel like the first steps in that process. And they can be hard. Last time through, in March, I skipped most of them and only half-heartedly and incompletely did the ones I didn’t skip.

I thought they deserved extra attention in their own post as an acknowledgement that they’re hard, and a way of tackling them together.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Time Travel: Creative Monsters and Champions” →

Blindness and Disability, Science

More About Medicine

Chrys Buckley

premedFax From the Future: I don’t know if anyone’s seen the show Switched at Birth on ABC Family, but Daphne, one of the main characters, one of the girls who was switched at birth, is deaf and is also pre-med. In general, though her disability is different from mine, I’ve found the portrayal pretty accurate. In this past season (2015), she started her pre-med classes, and I found a lot of her struggles and interactions in that world to be really realistic (well except for on an exam she mixed up cations and anions, which I don’t find realistic at all, but that’s chemistry-related not disability experience). Sometimes the show stirs me up and gets me mad. Sometimes it inspires me to want to tell my own story. Sometimes it kind of makes me nostalgic for the time I was writing about in this post, taking those first chemistry classes.

Now on to the original post:

I announced on my facebook a week or so ago that I’m going pre-med in school, which is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and want to say more about. I’ve been thinking of it as “my big secret” for awhile, but really it was more just something that was so new, and I was so uncertain of, that I had to keep it to myself for awhile.

Continue reading “More About Medicine” →

Writing

Some interesting things from the crazy world of immunology (and summer classes)

Chrys Buckley

close-up-of-antibodyI just finished a four-week summer course in immunology, as part of my biology degree. Summer classes are INTENSE. Material that is usually spread out over an entire term is squished into four little weeks, and you have class four days a week, two and a half hours a day. And overall, you cover a huge, huge amount of material over a really short amount of time. There is lots of reading. It’s intense.

To make it worse, Immunology is a 400-level biology class, meaning mostly seniors take it, who’ve had several years of bio already. I’ve had one. There are also two recommended pre-req classes to take beforehand: cell biology and microbiology. Since all I’ve had is the first year (called “Principles” at my school), I haven’t taken either. So, I knew I was getting into something a bit over my head. It was just, I really liked the immune system part of Principles, and I like a challenge and it sounded kind of badass to do something that difficult in a short amount of time, making it that much more difficult. And it just sounded soooo interesting. When I was first thinking about it, I asked my Principles prof if I would be crazy to try it. She said to me, “All our summer courses are intense but I think if someone could do it, it’s you.” And that felt really good. But I still thought it might be half-crazy to try. Anyway, the class was full. For awhile I checked, day after day, to see if there were any openings and when there weren’t, I kinda gave up.

Continue reading “Some interesting things from the crazy world of immunology (and summer classes)” →

Music, Science

Gearing up for Winter 2010

Chrys Buckley

psuskybridgeClasses start on Monday! In one sense it feels like I’ve been on break forever, and in another it feels like it’s all starting up again so soon.

My main class will be the continuation of the biology class I took last quarter. This time though, the focus will be on evolution for the first half of the term and plant form and function for the second half of the term. I’m excited for both, though I read somewhere that in the evolution section the students have to memorize phylogenetic trees (basically these charts with branches showing how closely or distantly different species are related based on their rRNA sequences) and that sounds a bit tedious.

Continue reading “Gearing up for Winter 2010” →

Science

Killing Time Waiting for my Final

Chrys Buckley

bioexamAnd my brain is full, I don’t think there is any point in trying to stuff in any more details about biology. Anyway we had a practice final and I got 78 out of 80, so I’m probably fine, I hope.

So, today is the last day of my first term. Overall, it’s been really good. Really loving the biology class, and my lab group started studying together. That’s been great! We’re all contributing, splitting up tasks like writing up vocabulary, going through practice tests, teaching each other things the others don’t get so well. I know it has been a huge benefit on both ends. It’s great to have people to clarify things you don’t quite get, and it’s also very helpful to teach something to someone else. I feel like my knowledge of how to solve genetics problems really solidified when I wrote it out to show another girl in my group. And studying with these guys is fun! Our ages range from 22 to 39 and a lot of times we take our study sessions to the bar, or go grab a beer before class or after a test. It’s been really fun, and it’s kinda cool to have people to talk with about this stuff b/c most people I know aren’t really into biology.

Continue reading “Killing Time Waiting for my Final” →

Blindness and Disability, Science

I Just Had the Coolest Afternoon!

Chrys Buckley

cookeWow.

Okay, I just had an awesome afternoon. Today I met with a woman who works as a naturopathic physician who is totally blind. I mean, WOW. It’s one of those times that reminds me that my visual impairment is NOT an excuse to not do things! I mean this woman is a doctor! She went through classes like gross anatomy and diagnostic imaging with no eyesight at all. How amazing is that?!?! It makes me feel like, yes, I can do science stuff, and there are all kinds of alternative techniques to do visually-intense things, in school and in life.

She also invited me to a group of blind and visually-impaired knitters and I’m going to do it. I’m good with my hands, and that is something that I’ve always felt that if I were taught how to do, I could really do by feel. So I am going to go get my knit on and be a stitchin’ bitch! It’ll be really nice to get connected with the visually-impaired community too. I’m psyched about that!

Continue reading “I Just Had the Coolest Afternoon!” →

Music, Science

Class Sign-Up Predicament (A Blessing in Disguise?)

Chrys Buckley

7f6512_woman_singing_into_microphone_in_silhouette_300So I have a bit of a predicament for signing up for classes.

I have to take between 6-8 credit hours each term this year. If I take less than six, I don’t get financial aid. If I take more than eight, then it’s more than half-time, and I simply can’t afford it even with the financial aid. Also if I take eight or less all year, then next year I can be considered an Oregon resident for the rest of my schooling, which will make all the difference in the world. I will seriously be paying less going full-time next year as a state resident, than I am this year at half-time. By a pretty significant amount!

So pretty straightforward, right? 6-8 credits shouldn’t be too hard to manage. Most classes are 4, so it should be easy.

Except that the Biology class I’m taking is a 5-credit class b/c it includes the lab. So that alone is not enough, and if I add any regular class, that puts me at 9 and I’m over my limit. So what it basically means I have to do is take some more unusual classes.

Continue reading “Class Sign-Up Predicament (A Blessing in Disguise?)” →

Blindness and Disability, Science

Survived My First Exam

Chrys Buckley

bioI had my first exam today. I was nervous, but I had studied hard for it. It went really well! If anything I was overprepared. I really took the time to make sure I understood everything. There were a few things I was struggling with and I looked them up online or later in my textbook b/c I didn’t want to get tripped up.

The exam covered a lot of material, especially the last chapter of the book that was on the test, which was an overview of all the parts of the cell, and was by far the longest chapter we’d covered, and was really dense, chock full of parts and processes and terms and tons of information that was different than the previous material (we basically went from some basic biochemistry stuff, building blocks, lots and lots of chemistry, to cell biology and there were just so many processes to understand).

Continue reading “Survived My First Exam” →

Science

Student Life

Chrys Buckley

Hoffman Hall - it would be hard to count the countless hours I've spent in this lecture hall
Hoffman Hall – it would be hard to count the countless hours I’ve spent in this lecture hall

Some general observations:

Things have changed A LOT since the last time I was in school, which was only seven years ago! I had to learn how to use Blackboard (online class program thing) for all my classes. It has its own separate email for each class, as well as discussion boards, review material, lecture notes, posted grades and assignments (some of which are completed solely via the web). Also, for my first lab class we had to make charts and graphs on Excel, which I’ve never used (luckily one of my lab partners is proficient).

Continue reading “Student Life” →