Death Sentence

(Poetry)

Samantha Brooks-Smith is a compulsive writer. In her junior year, she wrote a piece every day between February 20th and June 8th. One of her poems from that period No Exit was published in book 3 of the Garbanzo Literary Journal this past October. She was also chosen as on of 8 students to represent Bozeman in a national youth writing competition. The two pieces she submitted earned her the position as one of the top three young writers in the state. More recently, she has been writing exposes and research articles for the school paper.

It’s not really clear when Samantha started writing. From age 3, her life had been devoted to dance and for a very long time, she and everyone who knew her assumed she would pursue dance as a career. By eighth grade, she was rehearsing and performing up to 22 hours a week, assistant teaching and training is as many pre-professional dance programs as she could. Finally, just before opening night of a large production, she sprained her ankle. The injury was slow to heal and she had to take the rest of the season off

Still, her talent earned her a coveted position as a freshman in the dance program at Walnut Hill, a private school in Massachusetts. Somewhere in that year, she began to burn out. She realized that finding joy in dancing was getting more and more difficult. Fortunately, she says a terrific English teacher helped her arrange a rare transfer into the writing program.  In hindsight, she says that she wishes she had taken full advantage of the writing opportunities available then.

When she returned to Bozeman for her sophomore year, her writing seemed to drift. She says she kept journals and did a little here and there, but it wasn’t until her junior year that her writing really gained traction. 

As a student of the Bridger Alternative School, she was allowed to write research papers to complete her English credits. She says she loved it, sometimes writing a paper every three days simply because she could. Her teachers/mentors Tami O’Neil and Cale VanVelkinburg continue to give her a lot of support and she loves the freedom to just write! She is still writing research papers at a furious clip for the school paper. She says that she loves to research and write anything, as long as it is controversial. Her current article is on the Keystone Pipeline.

Each year, she builds on her education and gains more literary exposure which she says makes her writing not only easier, but stronger. The more she writes, the more she loves doing it.

Samantha will attend MSU in the fall. She admits she is considering journalism as a possible major, but she has no firm plans yet. She intends to take a few general classes and see what there is to discover.