Samantha Chencharik is a writer from Long Island, NY.

 Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New York Times, Newsweek, BBC World News, WebMD, National Geographic, New York Academy of Sciences, Pfizer.com, NeuroLeadership Institute, Medical Daily, and Dan’s Papers Hamptons Review 2012-2017, among others. A semifinalist for the 2023 Wild Women Prize, her poetry was selected for the 2022 Long Island Quarterly. Samantha has presented her work at Dan’s Papers’ Emerging Writers Literary Prize for Creative Nonfiction Literary Salon and the 12th Annual Frederick Douglass Interdisciplinary Conference. She is the author of Between Bookends (2022), her debut poetry collection. 

A National Press Foundation Fellow, Samantha underwent specialized training at Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine to cover the White House's Precision Medicine Initiative and is certified by the National Institutes of Health in Protecting Human Research Participants (PHRP) to ensure ethical and safe practices for human research participants. Samantha is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. Since 2017, she has volunteered as a professional writing mentor for Visible Ink, a writing therapy program that empowers cancer patients and survivors to share their stories through prose, poetry, and essays. She is also a marathon runner and an inaugural member of the Boston Athletic Association Charity Team of the Boston Marathon. 

Samantha is a Ph.D. candidate studying English with a focus on narrative medicine. She holds an M.S. in Journalism from Stony Brook University and a B.A. in Professional Writing from King’s College. Her byline is also published under née Samantha Olson.