Sarah Samms Velázquez is a storyteller and community herbalist whose work focuses on destigmatizing the human experience by encouraging us to reach out to nature for the sense of belonging we all need, especially right now.

Sarah’s work has appeared in literary & news magazines across the country including NBAP Literary Magazine, The Pacific Sentinel, Pathos Literary Magazine, Public Source, and even a community cookbook. Sarah was awarded the 2026 Deep Ecology Artist Fellowship that came with a short-stay residency at the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary. Most recently she onboarded as a radio journalist for West Virginia’s Public Broadcasting’s show, Inside Appalachia.

Sarah studied creative writing & psychology at Portland State University, was awarded a diploma in western herbalism as a ‘master herbalist’ at American College of Healthcare Sciences, and studied tropical plant medicine in Manzanillo, Costa Rica at The Wild Ginger Center.

Sarah publishes regularly on her Substack account, The Medicine House, a community herbalism publication with a focus on growing and crafting her own plant medicine while struggling with a disability, functional movement disorder. Here, Sarah imagines a world in resistance to human-made systems.

Sarah is also an avid hiker, a music nerd, an art dabbler, and a traveler of mother earth’s wonders and society’s underbelly,