My interview with Sam Moe, Visual artist and writer
Visual artist and writer Sam Moe on braiding stories, finding inspiration through self-archival work and speculative memoir, and writing recklessly for yourself rather than for others.
While at my residency in France in 2025, I interviewed Sam Moe, a visual artist and writer from Massachusetts who now lives in Huntsville, Alabama. Sam creates illustrations, paintings, and writes novels using a method called ‘braiding’ – something she was already doing intuitively before discovering the name for it. After reading The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas-Gonzalez about an indigenous Colombian basket weaver who wove her memoir together like weaving a basket, Sam realised ‘I do that but I don’t know what to call it’.
Sam takes three or more stories and alternates them like braids in hair. In her paintings this appears as three separate columns representing three stories, or alternating colour schemes every few centimetres; in her writing, she braids memory, trauma, visual imagery, and research. Her work draws heavily on gastronomy research and represents herself through hands and body, often with metaphorical elements like faces containing animals inside them.
Sam does extensive self-archival work, having kept 91 (!!) journals since age 12. She finds inspiration watching films about survivors of sexual violence and horror, and reading contemporary speculative memoir – a genre where people tell survivor stories visually or textually without using precise language. Key influences include Shea Hui Choa’s The Story Game, an experimental memoir written like a detective story interrogating how she got PTSD. Sam has a book called Cicatrizing the Daughters that’s recently been published and three more books planned for 2026.
Her creative routine is remarkably disciplined – she writes and makes art every single day, though art is more triggering so she does less of it. At residencies she writes around 10,000 words daily; at school she completes three poems or one short story or essay in one sitting (3,000-4,000 words), collecting and editing these for submission to literary magazines that eventually become books. On weekends she writes around 8,000 words, needing to complete entire pieces or she gets nervous.
She has a ritual of transporting all her materials – about 30 books – to whatever space she’s working in, setting everything up, then cleaning it all away so nobody touches it, which she attributes to not being able to make art safely growing up. These materials also serve as touchstones, objects that call forth theory and scholarly connections. Her advice to beginning creatives is to do whatever they want and write recklessly without anyone telling them what to do. She wrote 10 chaotic, messy novels before entering an MFA programme, which she found stifling and intense, stopping her writing for about 10 years.
Sam emphasises writing for yourself rather than for the market or trends, noting that literary agents want work that’s uniquely you and different, and that prizes like the Man Booker celebrate extreme uniqueness – so being yourself is actually what’s applauded, even though the literary community can feel intense.
Connect with Sam Moe
Introduction
MD: Hi Sam, can you just begin by introducing yourself, who you are, your name and where you’re from?
SM: Sure, I’m Sam Moe. I’m from, I live in Huntsville, Alabama, but I’m from Massachusetts originally.
MD: And tell me about what your creative discipline is, or disciplines are.
SM: I’m a visual artist and a writer, so I illustrate and I paint and I write novels.
Creative Process
MD: Can you tell me a little bit about your creative process?
SM: Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about this over the years. I think I finally come at a method called braiding. I read The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas-Gonzalez and she talks about this indigenous basket weaver. She’s an indigenous Colombian woman and her memoir is woven together as if she was weaving a basket. So, you have these vignettes that alternate every paragraph and all her stories alternate but they have a pattern. I was like, I do that but I don’t know what to call it, but I write braided essays where you take three or more stories and then you alternate them like the braids in a hair, like on a person’s head. That sounds trivial but when I’m painting I do it in braids and so the painting way above has like three separate columns because it’s got three stories going on and then when I was painting the one behind me, I was alternating and so the colour scheme I would make sure I was doing it every other like couple of centimetres. Then when I’m writing I do the same thing. I draw in a lot of memory and trauma and visual imagery then research and that kind of goes into the painting too because I do gastronomy research then I represent myself with like my hands and my body. But also it’s metaphorical like one part of the painting has my face and there’s an animal inside of it and so there’s also like a unreality element but all of my creative writing has the elements, fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Creative Inspiration
MD: Where do you get your creative or where or who or what inspires you for your creativity?
SM: That’s such a good question. I do a lot of self-archival work. I have 91 journals that I’ve kept since I was 12.
I also watch a lot of films about survivors like a lot I watch a lot of films about sexual violence and also horror and then I read contemporary speculative memoir about those experiences. Shea Hui Choa’s The Story Game was a huge inspiration. Her memoir that is her interrogating how she got PTSD but it’s experimental and so it’s her playing a game with her sister and her sister keeps being like the story you’re doesn’t sound real what really happened to you and then she’s like I’m upset but I don’t know why I’ll tell you another version and then they keep going until you find out like what’s at the core of her trauma and she read every Agatha Christie novel ever to write a memoir that’s like a detective story and so I started getting really into that genre and the genre is called speculative memoir and then I learned that there’s speculative horror as well and it’s just people telling stories visually or textually about being survivors but not using precise language and I was like oh my god I can do that too so that’s why all my images have like disembodied hands and mouths and stuff to sort of mirror that.
MD: Yeah and you’ve got something coming out soon?
SM: Yeah I have a book coming out allegedly in August [the book, Cicatrizing the Daughters is out now] and then I have three more in 2026.
MD: Yeah and will that just be in the US?
SM: Hopefully it’ll be everywhere because all of them use IngramSpark I didn’t realize yeah but my one that just came out is from the UK but you can get that everywhere.
MD: Yeah which is cool excellent excellent we’ll put links to that in.
SM: Yeah that would be so cool yeah.
Creative Routine
MD: Tell me a little bit about what your creative routine is.
SM: Sure, yeah. I write and I make art every single day. I make less art. The art is more triggering but I write every day. If I’m at a residency I usually write like if I’m at a quieter residency like 10,000 words a day but if I’m at school I write usually three poems or one short story or one essay all in one go, so three to four thousand words, and then I collect and edit those then I send them off to lit mags in like bundles and then they eventually become books. I usually do it every day and then on the weekends when I have more time and I’m not at school I write like 8,000 words. I have to have like a completed piece or I get nervous so I have one completed essay and then I decide oh I’ll write another and they’re each 4,000 words. I write at school and I write at my apartment at a desk but I always pick up all of my stuff like some kind of weird pack animal and I have to migrate it to every space. When I’m done I have to clean it all up so that nobody touches it, which I think has to do with like growing up and not really being able to make art safely, so yeah, and then the next day when I go to a different desk I just put it all out again but it’s just like me transporting like 30 books all around the apartment and outside and it’s really heavy.
MD: Do you think they also work as touchstones for you?
SM: Yeah I do feel that way I used them when I was doing job interviews one of my mentors she was telling me I should have objects around me that call forth like theory so that when I get asked questions I can look and be like oh I really love this scholar let me talk about them so I love that it was really yeah it helped a lot I get a job so yeah.
MD: Because I know a lot of writers do have and artists do have you know touchstones but to be able to take that into the other kind of life as well yeah for professional life is fantastic.
Creative Wisdom
MD: If you were to be having a chat with someone who is just like at the beginning of their creative journey what piece of wisdom or pieces of wisdom would you want to impart?
SM: I would tell them to do whatever they want. I was so lucky because I was not in a creative writing program at first and so I was really reckless and I wrote I think 10 novels and they’re all really chaotic and messy, but I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do at that time and then I decided I wanted to be a professional writer. When I entered into my MFA program it was really stifling and intense and I stopped writing after and it’s taken me like about 10 years to come back to doing what I want but like a literary agent will tell you the same thing that you write for yourself and not for the market and that they don’t want you to pick up in the next big trend especially because it’s going to take two years after signing with them to get your book on the shelf and so it’s more about what do you have that’s just you that’s different and that’s also what I’ve noticed the Man Booker Prize especially goes off of is extreme uniqueness and so like being yourself is actually like applauded even though it doesn’t feel that way because the literary community is very intense but I would say don’t listen to people write for yourself and don’t write for your audience until you’re about to sign with an agent.
MD: I love that and I think it’s just actually one of the best pieces of advice to people starting out. Excellent, thank you for your time.
Connect with Sam Moe
- Sam’s latest book: Cicatrizing The Daughters
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If you haven’t discovered Creative Momentum with Meg Dunley podcast, I’d recommend having a listen. It has weekly drops of these bite sized episodes that feature creatives talking about their creative process, routine and inspiration. Each week has some great pearls of wisdom for everyone who is living or wishes they were living a creative life.
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