Biography

Sam Cohen is the author of the surreal linked story collection Sarahland (Grand Central Publishing), which was longlisted for the California Golden Poppy Award and translated into French on Burn-Aout. Her fiction also appears in anthologies Be Gay, Do Crime (Dzanc, 2025), Queer Flora Fauna Funga (Valiz, 2026), Pocket Stars (Pantheon, 2027), and others.

Sam’s work pushes boundaries of genre in order to investigate new possibilities for collectivity, including with the non-human. Refinery29 called her writing “ludic, provocative, and endlessly surprising” and Vogue said is “something to be celebrated.” Sam’s fiction appears in publications like Bomb, Fence, Electric Literature, Diagram, and O Magazine and has been supported by MacDowell. She has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing with a graduate certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Southern California and an MFA from CalArts.

Before joining the faculty at URI, Sam taught creative writing at Oberlin College, the University of California-San Diego, and Otis College of Art and Design.