Samantha Chagollan

Samantha Chagollan is a southern California writer and artist whose creative nonfiction explores memory, home, belonging, and her mixed Mexican-American heritage. She is currently writing Homesick, a memoir that considers the ways family legacies, cultural inheritance, and the places we call home shape who we become.

Her microessays, poems, and other creative work have appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Latin@Literatures, Months to Years, and the award-winning anthologies The COVID Monologues and Nonwhite and Woman. Her essay “Learning a Second Language” is featured in the new anthology, Mixed Roots from Beacon Press.

Samantha earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Cal Poly Humboldt, where she studied multicultural literature and the Spanish language. Early chapters in her career spanned publishing, editing, and writing, including writing numerous fiction and non-fiction books for children and teens.

These days, her work is increasingly focused on memoir and personal narrative. When she's not writing, Samantha enjoys getting messy with acrylic inks, collaging, and digging into a new block of clay.