Arya Samuelson is a writer, editor, and teacher currently based in Northampton, MA. She was awarded New Ohio Review’s 2023 Non-Fiction Prize and CutBank’s Montana Prize in Non-Fiction, judged by Cheryl Strayed. She has been a semi-finalist for nonfiction contests by Black Warrior Review, CRAFT, Ninth Letter, and Sonora Review. Her work appears, or is forthcoming, in Fourth Genre, Bellevue Literary Review, Columbia Journal, New Delta Review, Entropy, Gertrude, The Manifest-Station, Stone Pacific Zine, Half Mystic, and The Millions.

Arya graduated from Mills College with an MFA in Prose and was honored to attend residencies at Byrdcliffe Artist Colony (2023), Horned Dorset Colony (2022), Sundress Academy For The Arts (2020), and Wassaic Project (2019). She has studied at Lidia Yuknavitch’s online school of Corporeal Writing since 2017 and is proud to be part of the Corporeal Coven. Arya is currently working on a novel and a memoir in lyric essays.

In the past, Arya has worked as an advocate for domestic violence survivors, a Supportive Housing Specialist for homeless adults with mental illness, a coordinator at a synagogue, and a grant writer for documentaries and social justice organizations. She is on the Board of Directors for Perugia Press. When she isn’t writing or working, she is making herbal medicines, singing Eastern European choral music, or scouting adorable dogs. She is currently in training to become a somatic practitioner through Core Energetics and Somatic Experiencing.

Podcast Features

Artist Statement

My body is made of stories. Even in numbness or violence or disassociation, the body speaks. Through writing, I seek to communicate my inner world, turn my skin inside-out, make my body a public act. To inscribe new stories.

I emerge from sleep and reach for my notebook and pen. I start with an image, a phrase, a fragment of an idea. I write as if I am still dreaming, where language is beyond logic. I plant the seeds of imagination in the morning and feel how they grow throughout my day.

My parents separated shortly after I was born, and since then, moving between places has been the rhythm of my life. Perhaps for this reason, I continually write the in-between - between sleeping and waking, between languages, between past and present and future, the journey between lands. My characters are never simply home.

My writing is infused with and guided by music. Language shifts between percussive and melodic, pitches and rumbles, fluidity and silence. Trained as an opera singer, I write my way towards an open throat - its power, volumes, and multitudes. How it fills us with resonance, reminding us we are not alone.

I also bring my passion for herbalism and plant medicines to my writing, drawing power and resource from elemental forces, the cyclical nature of seasons, and the resilience of the earth.

My writing conjures ancestral grief and song, paying homage to and drawing strength from my ancestors. Writing invites me to fully inhabit my life –its joys and pleasures, sorrows and scars. I draw inspiration from many other writers, such as the viscerally epic Lidia Yuknavitch, the musically abundant Clarice Lispector, the dialectically incisive Maggie Nelson. I write because my stories are not mine alone.