Samantha Giles  grew up in an industrial section of Santa Monica, California and currently lives in the flatlands of Oakland, California. She holds a BSW from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Mills College.

 

Giles is the author of Total Recall (Krupskaya,2019), winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal of Poetry. Previous work includes hurdis addo (Displaced Press, 2011) and deadfalls and snares (Futurepoem, 2014), both of which won CA Conrad's Sexiest Poem in the years they were published.  She was also a Headlands Center for the Arts Resident in 2017.

An arts administrator, editor and curator, Giles was the Director of Small Press Traffic from 2009-2019. She currently provides programmatic and administrative support for organizations offering artistic access to diverse communities in San Francisco.