Read excerpts from Arya Samuelson’s writing here (click on links for full piece):

Fiction and Non-Fiction

“I Am No Beekeeper” in New Ohio Review (2023). Awarded the Non-Fiction Prize by Barie Jean Borrich.

“The artist begs me to collaborate with her. Write me something, anything, about bees, she implores. I scan my brain for memories, but the only thing I remember is being a flailing girl, bees in my mane of hair, panicking in summer idyll. I will have to research, learn things, think global. I acquiesce, hopeful that bees will distract from my own private grief—from the story I promised I would never write.”

“Car Wash” in Bellevue Literary Review (2022)

“While I wait for him to pull the trigger, I drive to the grocery store. Pick up milk, chewing gum, sponges. Drop off the dry cleaning: the dress I splattered with a spaghetti stain at Shana and Calvin’s wedding last month. Ignore the stench of the rotting plant in the backseat and keep the AC rippling.”

“The Dreams We Don’t Follow” in Half Mystic (2021, print)

“This would be a different kind of story if I emerged at the end as a famous singer. There would be a clear arc, a beginning, middle, and denouement. But I am a story that can’t find its ending. Music and me, we’re just learning to trust each other again. I’m 30 now. I sing every day, mostly while washing dishes. I sing the songs that come to me, the steady stream emboldening me to sing louder, be simpler, take more risks. Play. My hands pour between porcelain and skin, vibrations and body, water and music. I’m a current in motion. A song that always starts in the middle.”

“Labyrinths” in Columbia Journal (2021)

“My mother speaks for me. I nod along as she recounts the twisted history of my illness, too weak to correct her when she trips over a detail. “I’m a doctor,” she declares, and physicians pay heed. They answer her litany of questions, tolerate the shrill panic in her voice. My mother is a medical professional, and this is my golden ticket—the only thing that will save me. I’m one of the lucky ones. Some people wait years, decades, hundreds of thousands of dollars before they arrive at a diagnosis of Lyme Disease. Mine came easy: a week after the pink rashes that colonized my skin, a variant of the classic bull’s eye. Treatment was supposed to last four weeks.”

“The Women Are Waiting” in The Manifest-Station (2021)

“These women are waiting. Hearts beat wildly, skin pulsing with the desire to be carried away on the boat of narrative that will give their lives, their pain, a purpose. The boats with engraved names like Plot or Character Development or Foil. Many will wait for a yacht to dock and hope for a big pay-off, others prefer a fishing boat (an ensemble drama,) while some settle for a sailboat: a self-published journey. It’s only the bravest and most foolish who dream of Transformation, the solitary ship that travails the rockiest, most violent waters.”

“We Don’t Have Language for This” in Gertrude Press (2021)

“We were lying on the train tracks and it was my idea. Maybe it was the logic of rosé, of late day sunlight soaking into skin that had forgotten what warmth could feel like, of a sea so close you can feel it breathing. The whole world was the breath of ocean and the smile of sun, sunset on a hill by the sea, and we were drinking rosé from the bottle.”

“Hyperballad” in Stone Pacific Zine (2021)

“I’m torn out of the dream into my wild body. Pelvis pumping ferociously towards the sky. Legs writhe, rub static, wrest free of the sham my not-yet mother-in-law bought us. The cracks of a blue sky peer out at me. A dream of a world I’ve already left, yet my body still clings to.”

“Sanctum” in Cutbank Issue 90. Awarded the 2019 Montana Prize in Non-Fiction, judged by Cheryl Strayed.

“We sit. We stand. We sit. We stand.

The synagogue trembles with darkness and fire.

I am five years old. My butt is sore and I’m bored. I dig my hands underneath my dress and trace fingers along my flesh where my underwear band presses marks. Reading the language of my body, though I don’t realize it.”

“Dangle” in New Delta Review (2019)

“I think I’ll plunge today,” the woman says to nobody, choosing a dress with curves like the moon. Mid-day phone calls, lies plucked out of the air like fresh-hatched eggs. Practicing the bulge of her lips. Time sparkles with wanting & shivering & burning & sighing.”

“Where The Sound Lives” in Entropy (2019) — publication out of print

“Some days you wake up missing Amy, as if you knew her. When you exhaust Amy’s discography, you listen to covers of her songs on YouTube. But all you can find are a host of performers attempting to imitate her husky voice, her bad girl attitude, her silver-white vocal runs like trails of cigarette smoke. Everyone seems to you a cheap impersonator. You want to breathe new life into her songs. But how do you revive a woman from the dead?”

“Sisters” in Hematopoiesis Press (2017, nominated for a Pushcart Prize) — publication out of print

Book Reviews, Interviews, and Articles

“Fit to Print” in Mills Quarterly

Mills has always been a refuge for artists bucking the conventional path. The stellar undergraduate arts courses, acclaimed experimental MFA degrees, and unique Book Art master’s program welcomed thousands of students over the years into a lineage of radical art making. Amber McCrary, Virginia Mudd, and Mira Mason-Reader are all alumnae who have continued this legacy beyond Mills—not only as artists, but as creators of publishing presses that counter the trends of a notoriously elitist, racist, and male-dominated industry. In contrast, these alumnae are publishing marginalized voices and perspectives, taking stands on issues that matter, and challenging capitalist models of success to celebrate the joy and pleasure of creative expression.

“Strongwomen: The Fight For Feminist Fitness” in Mills Quarterly

“What do this Strongman champion, an opera singer turned world-class boxer, and the founder of the nation’s first queer gym all have in common? They’re all badass Mills alumnae who are, in incremental and momentous ways, charting new ground in the landscape of professional fitness. They don’t fit a stereotype, and are instead bringing their full selves to their practices and redefining success in their own terms.”

“What Justice Is And Is Not: On Lauren Levin’s ‘Justice Piece // Transmission’” in The Millions

“What is justice? This is the inquiry around which Lauren Levin’s Justice Piece // Transmission orbits. Unflinching, dialectical, and curious to its core, Levin’s work grapples with the nature and practice of justice—what it is, what it isn’t, who defines and enforces it, how we learn or create it, and how its absolutes buckle under the weight of examination. Consisting of two prose poems, “Justice Piece” and “Transmission,” Levin’s explorations raise even more questions—about motherhood, illness, family, and whiteness—which form a tangled, poetic body of limbs, placental membranes, and beating hearts.”

“Holding Other People’s Secrets in Your Hands: A Review of Love is The Drug & Other Poems” in Entropy

“Many of the poems haunt like the touch of a lover long after they have left. Bodies flit by in shadow-light, never allowing you to see the whole. There are few “characters.” There is you and me and him and them and her. How the world feels when the body is lit with desire, or anguished with heartbreak: reduced to its essential components. Every moment is broken, splintered, and infinitely whole. The poems are so personal, obfuscating even as they let you in – but isn’t the experience of hearing anyone else’s love story? These are the poems you would tell your best friend if you could skip over what happened – telling them instead how you coated your fingers with sunflower seeds and maple syrup (“Sunflower Seeds,” Kelsey Kundera), or about the reckless pleasure of driving steadily at 35 mph on the highway (“Steady,” Kar Johnson), or about “a single bud of dry weed wrapped in a white, wrinkled cocktail napkin tucked into the zipper pocket of your gold purse” (“Faith” Josey Rose Duncan). Or if you could be as devastatingly honest as “Four” by Devin Copeland: “They won’t let you just say, no / No / Everything hurts / And it always will.”

“An Interview with Koa Beck” in 580 Split

“I had the opportunity to speak with Koa Beck, feminist journalist and writer, while she was visiting Mills for our Contemporary Writers Series in September 2018. An alumna of Mills College, Beck moved to NYC two weeks after graduation and immediately began responding to Craigslist ads for babysitters and nannies, cold-pitching publications, and “writing for anyone who would let her.” Since then, Beck has become a powerful voice within feminist media and quickly ascended through the ranks – from Senior Features Editor at Marie Claire, to Executive Editor at Vogue.com, to Editor-in-Chief at Jezebel. In late 2018, Beck stepped down from Jezebel to write a critical theory book about fourth-wave feminism, in addition to a novel. Throughout our interview, Beck was graceful and soft-spoken, deeply thoughtful with her words and nuanced in her criticisms, as she shared about her experiences working as a journalist during the #MeToo movement, challenging white feminism, and breaching traditional notions of success to pursue what she loves most.”