Sam Francis

Sam Francis has recently joined the Dialect fold through Word Space, our partnership with Literature Works

Word Space is Literature Works’ inclusive and diverse talent development programme for developing new voices from around the South West region - Sam is one of 8 emerging writers to be selected for the scheme 2026-2027. We thought we’d get to know Sam a little bit better via the medium of our questions from the edge…

Sam is an artist and backyard naturalist who writes. Hybrid text is central to her practice, unfolding across sound, film, photography, installation, and print through reflections on space, place, and ecologies. Her ecofeminist almanac *Teasels* was published by Hazel Press in July 2025.

Tell us a bit about your background and your creative practice.

I’m an artist who writes – sometimes as part of my art making practice, and increasingly writing in its own right, for its own sake. I also work as a community gardener, and creative producer which feeds into my practice. I live in the South West where a lot of my creative work begins, is inspired by, and located in and around its landscapes and lives. I studied fine art photography and sometimes use images (and film) in my work interwoven with text – the two often going hand in hand when an idea begins to emerge and take shape.

I’m interested in context – developing a thought, idea, work, response to a place, a people, a living entity, a space, a thing. This is when I feel most creatively alive, where an intuitive process emerges through deep attention. I’m interested in the female experience – especially at mid-life, and am often thinking about the experience of solitude, non-normativity, connection with other life forms, and traces of things that once were.

For some time now, I’ve been exploring the colour green as a way of thinking, seeing, being, doing – both in my visual work and my writing. There’s so much in this inescapable colour, it could well my life’s work.

Describe yourself in three words.

Independent, (creatively) promiscuous, plant-y.

What’s your idea of creative happiness?

Doing things for their own sake and enjoying the process when things begin to emerge and you follow them not knowing where they may lead. Not always easy to achieve.

Your guiltiest writerly pleasure?

I do like making a list, though I’m not sure it’s a guilty list.

Where would you like to have a writing space?

A cabin overlooking the sea – can I have Dylan Thomas’s hut moved to Cornwall please?

Who or what is the greatest literary love of your life?

Derek Jarman (and his garden).

The quality you most admire in artists/writers?

Thoughtfulness.

What do you consider your greatest creative achievement?

Getting my first significant piece of writing published in print by a small publisher I much admire, and the process of getting a piece of work to that point.

And what’s been your greatest disappointment?

The endless rejections of proposals and applications.

If you had a creative superpower, what would it be?

The ability to eliminate doubt and fear.

What’s the most important lesson living a creative life has taught you?

That it’s certainly not the easy option, but ultimately it makes you feel alive and connected in this strange world.

All images copyright Sam Francis.