About

Samantha Shanley is a writer and educator with over 25 years of experience. She is an essayist, a memoirist, and a poet, and her work has appeared in a number of publications. She recently completed her first memoir, for which she is querying agents now. She teaches nonfiction courses at GrubStreet in Boston, in addition to offering private coaching, tutoring, and writing workshops to young people and adults. She also supports high school students who are writing their college essays at Samantha Shanley Consulting. Occasionally, she takes on freelance writing and editing projects. She is a single, divorced mom, and now that she is no longer recovering from having children, she is figuring out how to raise those children and continue her own growth without succumbing to the tedium of traditional motherhood.

Back when she wore office attire every day, Samantha worked with survivors of domestic abuse in Boston and South Central L.A., edited for an international public health organization, and taught hygiene and nutrition in developing countries. After earning her MFA in Creative Writing, she also taught writing and critical thinking to reluctant, overwhelmed, and horny first-year college students. She has lived all over the world, including a four-year stint as an expat in Germany and extended journeys into Nepal, Ecuador, and Peru. She speaks four languages as well as bits of Nepali and Tibetan. She doesn’t need any of these in her daily life anymore, except when she’s talking to herself, which her sons say she does a lot. (Her daughter, whose nose is always in a book, hasn’t noticed.)

Most mornings, Samantha is working on her writing while drinking a pot of coffee somewhere in New England, and as much as she’d like it to be in Vermont, or a tiny cottage overlooking the wandering sea, it’s not (yet). She thinks global warming sucks for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that ski season will never begin in July. At one point, she spent a whole lot of time running and training for road races, but she’s still never won a medal for anything in her life. Now, she takes her time, poking her way through the woods with a solid pair of trail running shoes. Life is better that way, and her energy goes where she needs it most.

She moves through life with a touch of synesthesia, a nagging travel itch, a lovely blend of family and friends, and three kids who remind her, gleefully, how imperfect she is, all the time.

Thanks for reading!