Hailing from Aotearoa, Sam is an award-winning critic, short story writer, and teacher.

His first collection of stories, Come the Tide, was published by Platypus Press in 2019. (read a review here). Daisy Johnson described his second collection, on a distant ridgeline, as “one to watch.” It is now available here, and you can read a glowing review in the TLS here.

A widely respected literary and music critic, his study of The Short Story in Midcentury America won the 2018 Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize.

His second critical work, Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, and Loneliness, was published with LSU Press in 2019, and named a book of the year by Jazz Times (read a review here).

He is currently editing the notebooks of Sonny Rollins.