What happens when clothing becomes a way to remember?
For Annastacia Stegall, this question began forming during her MFA program at Eastern Washington University in 2022. She entered knowing what she wanted to write about, but not necessarily how she wanted to write it. As she continued working, one theme began appearing again and again: clothing and its connection to memory.
“I’m someone who needs a very clear theme with a book,” Stegall said in an interview with Little Village via Zoom. “I like writing with a theme in mind.”
Her thesis advisor eventually pointed out how often she connected memories to clothing. The observation became an “aha” moment, giving her a way to connect ideas that had already been surfacing throughout her work. That realization became one of the central threads of Tears, Bra, and All: An Autobiographical Collage, her newly released book from Girl Noise Press.
The collection brings together poetry, personal experience and childhood games, using familiar objects and forms to explore memories that are anything but simple. With Stegall’s guidance, readers can make their own “cootie catchers”/paper fortune tellers, or play a game of MASH, Mad Libs or Two Truths and a Lie, instead of just reading about it. In an increasingly digital world, that physical interaction has taken on particular importance for Stegall.
“More now than ever,” she said, “the concept of making is so important.”
The paper doll on the cover is a motif Stegall had been trying to incorporate into a project for years.
Part of the inspiration came from My Scene, an online dress-up game she played growing up. She wanted to recreate that experience through poetry but struggled to figure out how to make the concept work. Then her publisher suggested something that immediately clicked: a paper-doll cover using clothing items from the book.
The image also connects to one of the book’s heavier focuses: the way clothing becomes entangled with the stories told about women to undermine their experiences. Stegall pointed to the familiar question that can follow violence against women, “What was she wearing?”
In that context, the paper doll becomes more than a nostalgic childhood image. Something associated with play and innocence becomes part of a larger examination of gender, bias and personal expression.
“It was a happy coincidence,” she said, “but it worked out so well.”
The third section of Tears, Bra, and All is a lyric essay, requiring Stegall to approach the work differently from the way she normally writes poetry. Instead of beginning with the writing itself, she began with research.
“I mapped what I wanted to do, and I found a ton of sources that I felt like talked about this material,” she said.
Even with a chorus of perspectives represented, the writing remained deeply personal. When people ask writers why they write, Stegall said she often quips that her answer is revenge. Behind the joke was a more serious realization. Some of the experiences she writes about happened roughly a decade ago. By the time she began writing about them, she had spent years processing and felt capable of looking at them critically.
“I realized one day that I was like, I want to be heard,” she said.
The more she wrote, the more she found people who recognized something of themselves in her work. “It was very cathartic, but it was also like writing for a community, in a way.”
Despite the deeply personal nature of Tears, Bra, and All, Stegall isn’t interested in telling readers exactly what they should take away from it. Instead, she points to the insight she has gained from her own experiences: the ability to look back without needing to reshape or explain them. “I feel no way other than fact,” she said.
For her, that recognition represents a movement away from the experience. It happened. It is part of her story. But she can continue beyond it. That also informs the way she thinks about her relationship with readers. “I don’t want to put the author on a pedestal,” she said.
Rather than prescribing a lesson, she wants readers to decide what the work means to them. She herself does not have to provide the answer, rather, the reader gets to participate in finding one.
That relationship between writer and reader extends beyond interpretation and into the physical experience of the book.
Stegall, who is now based in Spokane, Washington, held her book launch there shortly before her interview with Little Village. Rather than limiting the event to a traditional reading, she incorporated the same multimodal elements that helped shape the book.
Her partner designed an illustration of a chainmail bra that was screen-printed onto T-shirts. The image references the book’s first poem, “Her Land,” which draws from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and includes a reference to a chainmail bra. The event also included snacks connected to characters in the book, childhood games and cootie catchers readers could make themselves. To top it all off, a video poem that appears in the book played during the event, enhancing the atmosphere of her work.
For Stegall, these elements aren’t simply decorations surrounding the writing. They are another way of experiencing it. She is particularly interested in the “multimodal aspect” of writing and in finding ways to make readers active participants.
That idea may be the thread connecting the many seemingly different elements of Tears, Bra, and All. Clothing becomes memory, childhood games become poetry, personal experiences become community, and a book becomes something that doesn’t necessarily end when the reader reaches the final page.
Stegall doesn’t want to dictate what readers should take from the work. Instead, she gives them room to interact with it, interpret it and perhaps even make something of their own. Maybe that means picking up a paper doll, or playing a game. Maybe it means recognizing something familiar in someone else’s story, or maybe it simply means making something alongside the person who wrote it.
Upcoming events:
Meet the Author: Annastacia Stegall, Beaverdale Books, Des Moines, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 6:30 p.m.
Poetry Art Night at DSM Flea, Friday, Oct. 16, 5 p.m.
