SELECTED ESSAYS
Sammi's non-fiction tends to focus on relationships, identity, and women's issues. She also enjoys writing reviews for books, music, and food.
Millennials Like Me Were Sold a Fantasy About Weed. Now Researchers Have a Warning.
Slate
“I used to fantasize about my blunt rotation, but now I fantasize about talking to that same group about our dependencies. From the moment I shared my first apple bong stuffed with weed stolen from my friend’s dad, I have loved the effects of marijuana, but my experience has been far different than the “I can quit any time” feeling I thought I was signing up for.”
I Tried AI for “Writing” and the Results Were Disastrous
Open Secrets Magazine
“I’d rather see my work’s frayed edges than AI’s perfectly polished ones. I’d rather spend 20 minutes replacing a redundant phrase than outsource that task to an algorithm. I’d rather kill my darlings with the satisfaction that given enough time and toil I will know what belongs and where it belongs and what the hell I’m trying to say.”
Mom Helped Me Get Through A Loss From Heroin - By Confessing She Secretly Used It Too
Another Jane Pratt Thing
“I was stunned. Her long, manicured fingers played with the fold in my quilt, her eyes cast down. She was a little ashamed, revealing such a chink in her Mom armor. But what I heard was the story of a hero. Someone who literally ran through the night away from a very bad situation to give herself a shot at life.”
I Lost Myself When I Became a Mom—My Child-Free Friends Found Me
Jenny
“I refrained from texting my friends who had just done so much buoying, feeling like too much of a burden, but Joselyn texted me anyway: “How’s our girl?” I sent a picture of my miserable two-year-old watching Cinderella with her giraffe Geoffrey tucked in beside her.
‘No. I meant you!’”
I Was A Disillusioned Waiter In New York. A Chance Encounter With Catherine O'Hara Changed My Life.
HuffPost Personal
“The restaurant I stood in had distorted what success should look like, but no one could extinguish the aura of true success that radiated off Catherine. She had “it” — that thing I’d come to NYC to prove I had, too, and “it” wasn’t thinness or ambition at all costs, or even talent, though of course she had that, too. It was her sense of self — how she held herself and confidently, yet humbly, moved through the world — that no one could rival... or take away from her.”
The Most Unhinged Moms of 2025 — And Why They Matter
Jenny Magazine
“Snapped moms are scarier than ever because they’re just like us. They do their hair, have impressive jobs, seem invested in their children’s well-being before committing crimes, becoming addicts, abusing their children, and—like Sarah Hoover and I were simultaneously in my kitchen—having mental breakdowns.”
What Are You?
The Sun and Short Reads
“After our meeting, while we are Jell-O and waited for our parents to pick us up, a girl with silky blond hair and Baby Spice pigtails asked, ‘What are you?’
‘Eight and three-quarters,’ I shared.
Everyone laughed. ‘No. Where do you come from?’”
A Single Moment On Prom Night Made Me Rethink Everything I Knew About Men
HuffPost Personal
“Alone with a boy, my past traumas hummed up toward my heart in a flurry of fear. Maybe, I thought, he does “like-like” me. Maybe he is no different than the others. Maybe I am not safe.”
I'm a Tesla-Driving Liberal
Open Secrets Magazine
“At the time I worried my Tesla with New York plates would make me enemies as I drove deeper into the conservative south. Now, in 2025, I worry my car will be vandalized in Brooklyn, where most of my neighbors share my same political convictions.”
One of the Hardest Things About My Fertility Struggle Wasn’t What You Think
Slate
“Stress hurts your chances at pregnancy. So why, in the pursuit of making life, are we using a system that causes it?”
To Have (Stuff) and to Hold
The Offing
“It once felt like a failure and a loss of self for Henry to suggest we share toothpaste. Now, watching our things get picked from the sidewalk I can’t remember where half of them came from. Whether I bought them or he did. Because now all of it is ours, the stepping stones and building blocks of our shared life.”
The Election Gave Me A Reason To Be Grateful My Dad's Not Here For The Holidays
BuzzFeed
“Since he was a fiscally conservative Republican in life, I don’t know if my dad would have voted for Donald Trump. For this I have a complicated gratitude that I can never forgive our 45th president for.”
The Five Stages of Out of Place Grief
Sonora Review
“Moon has doubled in size in the last week! Grow baby, grow!” I wanted to delete the app, but Moon was still inside me. Sure, the pregnancy was shrinking instead of growing, but ectopic means “out of place” not absent, and I still felt just as pregnant as I had when I first found out.”
Does the personal always have to mean private? On the language we lack around infertility
Mutha Magazine
“I knew that infertility support groups exist, but I craved a normalizing of the topic in everyday conversation. Despite my attempts to do just that, telling others about my journey has made trying to conceive during one of the loneliest eras in history even lonelier than I ever imagined staying silent would.”
How I Remember It
Hobart
“Remember the Halloween cookies and the art shows and the drive-thru lessons and the dart games and the nude park and the collages in the dolphin notebook and the long skirts you wore and the poems? What is love if not this? How old would I need to be to have it?”
October 7th, 2010
Past Ten
“After all, what are we talking about when we talk about magic? The trick, or our ability to believe in it?”
The Inherited Imagination
Literary Hub
“But when we have that feeling, that “I have to tell this one” feeling, maybe that’s not material from the freefall, it’s what’s at the bottom, a tree, or maybe in my case on ocean, with fragments of our familial traumas that we have to retell, to reenact in our own words, to heal, not just ourselves but our families past and present. And maybe that’s why it aches sometimes to have a story you want to tell. Because trauma leaves pain.”
Rules of Thumb for Surviving Your Partner's Family This Holiday Season
Glamour
“You'll have to put in some effort to gain the love of his/her family, just the way you did with him/her in the early stages of your relationship. It's not just about meeting the parents; it's about dating them and sustaining a relationship. Here are some things to remember before passing the stuffing...”
The Unbearable Hush of My Day Job
The Feminist Wire
“At 24 I’ve been in the restaurant industry for nine years...
I’ve worked for corporations and indie shops, glorified fast food and fine dining, behind the bar and on the floor, but there is an unfortunate thread that runs through these experiences: there is always sexual harassment.”
