Cindy Sams is a Southern writer whose essays and creative nonfiction explore family, memory, place, inheritance, and the stories we carry forward—whether we mean to or not.

Her work has appeared in Pangyrus, Reckon Review, Porchlight, Blue Mountain Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Hot Flash Lit, Tiny Memoir, and the Brevity Blog, among others. Her essay “Barre None” is forthcoming in Under the Gum Tree. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Cindy began her writing life as a newspaper reporter in Macon, Georgia, before spending more than twenty-five years teaching and directing theatre. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing in 2022 and now teaches Theatre Appreciation at Middle Georgia State University.

She is the author of the chapbook Humble Pie: Stories of Biscuits, Backbone, and Becoming and has completed Reverse Migration: A Memoir in Pieces, a hybrid memoir about family mythology, migration, memory, and the complicated business of going home. She is currently at work on Scrap Magic, a collection of essays about what we find, what we believe, and what we keep.

She also writes as Nora Belle at her Substack, where Southern life, reinvention, memory, and the occasional strongly held opinion are all fair game.

Cindy lives and writes in Macon, Georgia.