About

Sam Risak is a writer, scholar, and educator raised in rural Beverly Hills, Florida.

Sam Risak is a writer, scholar, and educator whose work explores the pain of addiction, poverty, incarceration, illness, and violence. She is interested in how harm becomes ordinary and how we can break through the darkness with tenderness and moments of absurdity. Her writing is shaped by a darkly comic sensibility.

A PhD candidate in English at The Ohio State University, she studies addiction narratives and teaches courses in literature, film, composition, drug culture, and the health humanities. She is a member of Liberation at the Margins, a collective committed to Black feminist and abolitionist pedagogy and prison education.

Previously, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English Literature from Chapman University, as well as bachelor’s degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies and Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. Her editorial experience includes work with Sweet: A Literary Confection, Two Dollar Radio, CRAFT Literary, and TAB: The Journal for Poetry & Poetics.

She is currently completing a novel inspired by the cultural figure of “Florida Man.” She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Short bio

Sam Risak is a writer, scholar, and educator whose work focuses on creative nonfiction, addiction narratives, health humanities, hip hop studies, gender, and incarceration. She is a PhD candidate in English at The Ohio State University.