Work samples

  • The Girl Who Went South

    dark tale of survival and sacrifice. Published in Gone Lawn, Issue 55 (2024) The Girl Who Went South (Gone Lawn, 2024) is rooted in the style I call Gothic Escapism, blending moody and fully immersive settings with deeply personal themes. This story explores the complicated bond between a mother and daughter, touching on codependency and the weight carried by parentified children—kids who end up taking care of themselves or stepping into adult roles too soon. It’s a mix of raw emotion and haunting imagery, where the landscape mirrors their tangled relationship. The piece reflects my fascination with how love and obligation can blur, and how children navigate the need for independence while feeling tethered to their caretakers.

     

  • Self Portrait of the Poet Holding Her Heart’s Dilated Left Ventricle

    This poem was nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize. Self Portrait of the Poet Holding Her Heart’s Dilated Left Ventricle (Stone Circle Review, 2024) was nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize and is one of my most personal works. The poem wrestles with the layers of living with a terminal heart condition while being a mother and navigating the late-found joy of love in my second marriage. It’s about the strange, fleeting nature of time—how it feels both urgent and elastic—and the way I’ve learned to compartmentalize these overwhelming truths. In writing this, I explored the idea of creating a second self, a kind of emotional double, to survive and keep moving forward while holding all these contradictions at once.

  • Blue Irises

    This poem won 2nd place in the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize for HoCoPoLitSo. Blue Irises, which won 2nd place in the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize for HoCoPoLitSo, is a poem rooted in the delicate balance between grief and joy. It reflects on the birth of my son, his time in the NICU, and the haunting memories of that summer—a season when not every baby made it. Their absence has stayed with me, and this poem becomes a way to hold their stories.

  • Collision Theory

    Published 2024 in BULL. Collision Theory, published in BULL (2024), delves into the tensions between toxic masculinity, fleeting tenderness, and the shadow of loss. The story is deeply inspired by the men in my family, all of whom were Pipefitters at Bethlehem Steel before the mill closed. Their lives, marked by the grueling demands of blue-collar work, shaped my understanding of masculinity—its toughness, its silences, its toxicity, and the rare but profound moments of vulnerability.

About Chrissy

Chrissy Stegman is a Baltimore native from a working-class family whose writing delves into the intersections of generational trauma, resilience, and imagination. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Stone Circle Review, Gone Lawn, BULL, Red Ogre Review, Blue Heron Review (Best of the Net Nominee, 2024), and UCity Review, among others. She was shortlisted for the Disquiet Poetry Prize in 2024 and awarded the Patricia Bibby 2022 Idyllwild Poetry Scholarship. Her creative… more

Jump to a project:

The Root Cause and The Station Portal

The Root Cause, based on my flash fiction piece was transformed into a multimedia immersive website hosted at www.thestationportal.org. This project was published by Voidspace, an interactive arts platform, and featured in the Voidspace LIVE event at Theatre Deli, London, in 2024. The site integrates elements of speculative fiction, societal critique, and interactive storytelling, inviting users to engage with the unsettling world of The Station. I composed the music and created all materials, including ancillary social media accounts on Instagram and YouTube to accompany the storytelling world.

Themes and Experience

At its core, The Root Cause explores themes of accountability, societal control, and the blurred lines between justice and oppression. Through an official press release format, the narrative chronicles the unsettling case of Julia Falcon Delaware, an 11-year-old whose actions trigger the enforcement of the Root Cause protocol. The story probes deeply into societal dynamics, focusing on the themes of collective judgment, surveillance, parent-child autonomy, ritualized governance, and societal collapse. 

The website offers an interactive narrative experience that immerses users in the dystopian world of The Station:

Interactive Case Files: Users can delve into Julia Falcon Delaware's story through multimedia artifacts, including video evidence, eyewitness accounts, and judicial documents. Community Polling Simulation: Visitors participate in simulated polls, mirroring the public's role in the story's governance structure. "Live" Media Streaming: Access footage of pivotal events including the Dismissal.

Voidspace LIVE Presentation

The project gained acclaim when it was showcased at Voidspace LIVE in London. The theatrical event expanded the immersive experience by integrating live performance, VR elements, and audience participation. Attendees were transported into the Station’s world, grappling with ethical dilemmas that mirrored the site’s themes.

  • Sample The Station Portal
    Sample The Station Portal