Samantha Renee Ratcliffe is a graduate assistant and second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Kentucky. An Eastern Kentucky native, her writing centers queer life and the complexities of rural survival, as well as the intimacies of hunger, land, and body.  Alongside her writing, Ratcliffe has spent nearly two decades performing as the folk musician Fields May. She founded Hill Writers Collective, a free community workshop and reading series committed to amplifying regional and marginalized voices.