Hi! My name is Samantha Rae Lazar. Thank you for taking the time to read my little auto-bio. I began writing on Medium in June 2019, and I am in love with this platform, even with all of its challenges and changes. It has become the writing community I have always craved.

I have been a writer since I could write and a humanities teacher (English/Language Arts, Social Studies/History) since 1998. I have lived the school schedule since I was in pre-school. I buy new planners/calendars in June. I currently teach 5th grade.

I live and work in a beautiful…

The Look of Amie Martine, by Laurie Perez, is certainly a book I will not forget. Set in Iceland (thus, the chosen photo for this article), Arizona, and California, the main character, Amie has a gift for healing others through a mystical and at times, mythical power. It is as if she can read the souls of people she encounters. This is not just any story of magical realism. This is the kind of “wonder tale” that has me riveted from the start.

Yoga for the Mind

There are some books that just send your mind to a labyrinth. Once you begin contemplating the…

Finding the right audience for your writing can be quite a gamble, especially in the online world. As a poet who writes other things, I know firsthand how hard it can be to break into other categories and gain readership. So I am wondering, is it important to stay in a specific niche? Can a person be a successful creator if they choose to widen their audience?

It Doesn’t Have to Be One or the Other

I know that I have a very specific following for my creative works. I am most at home in the land of poetry, fiction, and magical realism. However, those categories are very niche…

Self-reflection is a really important practice, especially if you are wanting to grow. It can be hard to organize thoughts about your project or efforts. We all usually think about what went well and how it could have gone better. I have found a more action-based reflection helps me identify my next steps in moving forward with whatever it is I am doing.

The method is “Keep Doing, Stop Doing, Try Doing.”

To show this in action, I am going to finally reflect on the month-long writing “class” co-written by Christina M. Ward and me. It was the May Writing Experience (#MayWritingExperience), and we wrote our hearts out! A…

POETRY ARTICLE

I like to go back through the works of all our poets and mine The POM for impactful writing. We have such a great poetry community here — one that keeps growing. With the recent edition of two new submission editors, MDSHall and Julia Marsiglio, the publication is coming along more smoothly. Christina M. Ward and I thank you for continuing to bring quality work to this space. We learn and grow together.

One of the things I love about being a poetry editor is that I get exposed to such a wide variety of people, lives, stories, and styles…

How many times have you hit publish, only to realize you used ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’? Maybe you even sent it to a publication, and that editor didn’t catch it. (It happens.) How often do you see mistakes in books, menus, signs, and other people’s articles and think: People pay editors to fix this stuff? Should I become an editor?

As a writer, I want to know if I have made a mistake. As an English teacher, other people’s typos and misspellings pop out at me as if three-dimensional. However, I often overlook my own. …

born into a water glass
it takes the weight away
like soft notes
slippery lullabies

a case of the moon
when it rains
the sky will always
answer
riding days on the rain
time on my mind

I felt what it was like
under the water
I felt his end and
the quiet calm
bubbly beneath
the surface, smooth
the spray of my life
and he was gone
behind the wake
rowing the boat in
waving to me swimming
to the dock

he has the same look in
his eyes as they all might
maybe I should look closer

he…