2026 State of the Art Prize, New Mexico
2026 State of the Art Prize, New Mexico
Samantha Burns
Samantha Burns
Samantha Burns is a fiction writer who grew up in North River, New York, a hamlet located in the southern Adirondacks. Her aim is to write as honestly about rural life as she can, and the way into that for her is through experimentations with narrative form and the surreal.
Literary Fiction, Literature
2026
About Samantha Burns
Santa Fe, NM
Samantha Burns is a fiction writer who grew up in North River, New York, a hamlet located in the southern Adirondacks. Her aim is to write as honestly about rural life as she can, and the way into that for her is through experimentations with narrative form and the surreal. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. Her short stories have been published in or are forthcoming from Bennington Review , Terrain.org , Fence , and Smokelong Quarterly. In 2024, she was selected to take part in residencies from Yaddo and the Ucross Foundation. Additionally, she was also awarded an individual artist’s grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Her work has also been supported by Community of Writers, the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency, and Marble House Project. Aside from her interest in fiction, she also cohosts and edits a podcast called WorkWhile with the poet Stacy Boe about balancing writing and working full-time. Sam also occasionally moonlights as a whitewater raft guide on the Hudson River Gorge and rafts completely for fun on the Salmon River with friends in Idaho. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her partner, the poet Oscar Oswald.
Samantha Burns is a fiction writer who grew up in North River, New York, a hamlet located in the southern Adirondacks. Her aim is to write as honestly about rural life as she can, and the way into that for her is through experimentations with narrative form and the surreal. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. Her short stories have been published in or are forthcoming from Bennington Review , Terrain.org , Fence , and Smokelong Quarterly. In 2024, she was selected to take part in residencies from Yaddo and the Ucross Foundation. Additionally, she was also awarded an individual artist’s grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Her work has also been supported by Community of Writers, the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency, and Marble House Project. Aside from her interest in fiction, she also cohosts and edits a podcast called WorkWhile with the poet Stacy Boe about balancing writing and working full-time. Sam also occasionally moonlights as a whitewater raft guide on the Hudson River Gorge and rafts completely for fun on the Salmon River with friends in Idaho. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her partner, the poet Oscar Oswald.