Baker Artist Portfolios

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 endeavors span genres, but she is particularly drawn to what she calls "gothic escapism," a style inspired by family history of trauma and their exploration of healing through rich, imaginative storytelling and poetry.

Chrissy's writing career began in community advocacy and editing as a Braillist for the Maryland School for the Blind, where she created accessible content for non-sighted readers. This formative experience underscored how storytelling’s ability can foster connection. Later, Chrissy transitioned into nonprofit leadership as the Director of Grants and Special Projects for a domestic violence organization in Delaware, working closely with trauma survivors. These experiences deeply shaped the recurring themes of empowerment, survival, and repair in her work.

Chrissy has been recognized with fellowships and residency from the Dublin Fiction Cohort and the Kettle Pond Foundation and honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination for her poem Self Portrait of the Poet Holding Her Heart’s Dilated Left Ventricle. In addition to traditional writing, Chrissy has embraced multimedia storytelling with projects like The Root Cause, an interactive website experience, published by The Voidspace Zine. The site she created features immersive storytelling, world-building, original score, and activities for the reader. https://www.thestationportal.org/

When not writing, Chrissy enjoys hiking, birdwatching, and contributing to local conservation efforts through iNaturalist. She lives in Baltimore with her fantastic husband and five (!) children.