Samantha Ratcliffe is committed to expanding access to free and enriching community writing spaces across Kentucky and beyond. With experience teaching English at both the high school and undergraduate levels, she considers herself a lifelong learner with a deep passion for poetry, writing, and small press publishing. She believes that art fosters empathy, and has made it her mission to promote creative accessibility. Ratcliffe's contributions have been recognized in various anthologies and journals, among the following accolades:
 

Jean G. Pival Outstanding Writing Teaching Assistant 2025-2026 Recipient
Winner of William Hugh Jansen Graduate Award for oral storytelling 2026
2026 UK Montana Big Sky Residency Recipient
2025 Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grantee
Honorable commission of Kentucky Colonel in 2025 
2026 King Library Press Broadside contest winner "After The Flood" (Manual on How to Cry)

​2025 King Library Press Broadside contest winner "They Live Inside My Name"
2025 Oak Ledge Residency Recipient, Hindman Settlement School

Poetry

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• “Meet My Dad Before You Cut SSI” & “Church of Dolls”, YNST magazine Issue 11, print

• "Tangerine" Switchback, Forthcoming, Hindman Settlement School's Stafford Anthology, print

• "Provokable" Provokable, UK's Ekphrastic Anthology, print April 2026

• "Common Wealth" Reprint Forthcoming, The Argyle Literary Magazine Issue #8

• "Sour" Forthcoming, The Uncommon GRACkle April 2026 Issue

• “This American Currency” Harpy Hybrid Review

• “America Does a Little Trick” Vagabond City Lit, Fall 2026, Issue 123 — Forthcoming

• “Ode to the Left Organ” Dogyardmag, Spring 2026 

• “Preserver”; “Pippin Moon”; “Woman as Hammered Copper Clawfoot Tub”; “Hard-shelled Mirrors in One Star Shaped Urge” Corporeal Magazine

• “Structural Decisions” A Community Zine to Save Aylesford, print

• “birch rot”; “the holler baby sent you another letter and it’s best you reply” Rooted, Resilient, Rising Anthology, University Press of Kentucky — Forthcoming

• “Ars Poetica” Chaffin/Kash Poetry Contest, Kentucky State Poetry Society — 2025 Non‑Ranking Finalist

• “what we keep”; “Last American New Year” Testament Anthology, Backwoods Press, print

• “Alive” All Else Pales 2: A Song, Emerging / Poems About Our Earth, print

• “It’s Still Good”; “Love Me Not”; “Southern Hunger”; “Southern Thirst” Discarded: A Rural Anthology, print

• “Overthrust” Pegasus, Kentucky State Poetry Society, print

• “Rot” Pegasus, Kentucky State Poetry Society

• “US, Dreaming” These Mosaics Anthology, Hindman Settlement School, print

• “Holler Timing” Untelling, Issue 1, print

• “Shuck White New Year”; “Manual on How to Cry” Untelling, Issue 3

• “Problem Child”; “We Wear” Yearling, Issue 3, print

• “Commonwealth” Yearling, Issue 4, print

• “Two Days Sat Up Like a Baby Doll” Yearling, Issue 5 — Forthcoming
  
  Flash Fiction

• "Mortgage Lifters" — Harpy Hybrid Review

• "The Sitter" — WRFL Rifle Summer 2025 Issue, print

•  “In Sight It Must Be Right” — White Wall Review, Issue 41

• “Mary Jane Watson Requests One More Day” — White Wall Review, Issue 41 

• "Fire & Eggs" Provokable, UK's Ekphrastic Anthology, print April 2026

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Ratcliffe is currently completing her debut full-length poetry collection, Common Wealth, a hybrid work that weaves surrealist flash fiction and poetry into a meditation on invisibility, poverty, and the erosion of environmental agency amid political unrest.