about the author

samantha rose johnson is a writer, editor, and poet from the Bay Area, CA. Her writing has appeared in OyeDrum, ILY Mag, blood orange, Occulum, and more. She is a graduate of University of California, Riverside with a B.A. in English, and furthered her writing studies at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and independently in various workshops from author Liska Jacobs and Community of Writers with Janet Fitch. She lives in California with her partner and sweet black cat, Sookie.

More about Samantha

In high school, Samantha got into the Marin School of the Arts program with a focus in Creative Writing. Her writing was first published in a collection titled, Being Naked, a collaboration between the writing and visual art & design departments. Her writing included poems and a short story.

While attending university in sunny (and hot!) Riverside, CA, Samantha self-published a poetry collection, Laments of a Treasure Chest, and gained a Tumblr following of 10k.

After graduating U.C. Riverside with her Bachelor’s in English, Samantha moved to the east coast where lived for 5 years. Lots of poetry was written, some was even published!

In 2015, she founded the cult, queer, feminist community, Pussy Magic, which ran as a lit mag from 2017 to 2020, where she was editor-in-chief. PM had a brilliant team of women, femme, and nonbinary writers and editors who volunteered their time to make PM what it was. Together they published hundreds of writers in the blog weekly as well as quarterly themed issues like Hallow’s Eve and Pride.

In 2017, she self-published her second poetry collection, L’ACQUA. She was accepted as a reader for the Sex Witch Slam in Salem, MA, with author and professor Kristen Sollée and artist Jacqueline Frances. Samantha was also invited to read twice at the Paint My World Poetry Slam in Oakland, CA, in 2017 and 2018.

In 2019, she wrote a chapbook of poetry (unpublished currently) and created the Satin Soulbits Podcast, a limited series revolving around “sex, wellness, and womanhood”. That was the tagline, but it was heavy on the womanhood.

By 2020, while the rest of the world slowed down, so did Samantha. She started her novel while enrolled in Novel 1 at UCLA extension while continuing her day job and freelance editing. She paused her own poetry writing and put Pussy Magic on hiatus to focus on fiction and relieve the volunteers as everyone’s lives changed.

In the last 6 years, she’s worked on her novel and short stories while working full-time in publishing, community management, and events.

Samantha is excited to write a lot more and submit work again!

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