Stringing words together and hoping for the best

Hi, I’m Cristina, a writer and bibliophile in Pittsburgh. My work explores our identities and relationships through disability and immigrant experiences. Welcome!

In 2020, I received the June 2020 Deaf Artists Award at the Anderson Center and was shortlisted for The Masters Review's summer 2021 Short Story Award. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney's, The MacGuffin, descant, Kaleidoscope, and elsewhere.

Now that we've gotten the boring stuff out of the way, here's the important stuff: I love cuddly scarves, cheap port, and first-person narratives. I will talk books anywhere, anytime, and at any opportunity.

Here you can find links to my published stories and my sporadic ramblings on all things literary.

To the Grand Dame of Crime

A love letter to Ruth Rendell

Let's Play!

The intricate dance of work and play in the creative process

The Wayward Mother

Character Study No. 1

The Inaugural Voyage

My (not-so) great character experiment

Fiction
The Silence Between Us
By Cristina Hartmann
2022
Read
Fiction
The One-Way Mirror
By Cristina Hartmann
2021
Read
Fiction
Carnaval, Upstate
By Cristina Hartmann
2021
Read
On Writing: A Memoir of the CraftStephen King
Let the Great World SpinColum McCann
By Night in ChileRoberto Bolaño
I Didn't TalkBeatriz Bracher
LucyJamaica Kincaid
Architecture of the Novel: A Writer's HandbookJane Vandenburgh
BlindnessJose Saramgo
The Emotional Craft of FictionDonald Maass
In the Time of the ButterfliesJose Saramgo
Arrows of RainOkey Ndibe
The Girl Who Played GoShan Sa
The Buddha in the AtticJulie Otsuka
Spill Simmer Falter WitherSara Baume
The Lathe of HeavenUrsula K. Le Guin
The Art of PerspectiveChristopher Castellani