Originally from Boone, North Carolina, Samantha Deal received her B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In May of 2013, she received an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at Western Michigan University. Samantha’s poetry and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Sonora Review, Word Riot, Rattle, Ninth Letter, The Journal, The Boiler, Mississippi Review, and other journals. She has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize, the Hunger Mountain Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, The Boiler’s Flash Essay Contest, and others. You can follow her @sammyleed