Samantha Ferrante Email and Phone Number

As the Communications & Development Manager with Indy Reads, I provide awareness and promotion of Indy Reads’ mission, programs, and impact through various storytelling methods to engage prospective and current students, partners, supporters, and donors. A significant part of my role involves strategically conceptualizing, producing, and evaluating creative content that can be leveraged across a targeted set of communication channels, including Indy Reads’ website, newsletters, social media, scripts, speeches, emails, media placements, and more. My love of storytelling with an attention to DEIA-centered philanthropy and an eye for keeping the big picture at the center of my detail-oriented project management style allows me to convert and retain supporters across the spectrum of engagement with this vital organization.

As the Development & Communications Coordinator with Indy Reads, I get to work with our non-profit community to tell the Indy Reads story: how they've been working towards 100% literacy in Indianapolis for nearly forty years. Thus far, I've been able to work as a part of the Indy Reads team to interview students, create digital and print collateral targeted towards quarterly appeals and general education campaigns, use Salesforce to track both marketing campaigns and donor relationships, and so very much more! I also tackle the monthly eNewsletter (10,000+ subscribers), roll-out press releases, execute website maintenance, and assist with event and fundraising strategy.

Sonic Poetry Festival is a community-based grassroots poetry and spoken word festival based in Melbourne / Naarm. 2023 is its inaugural year, catalyzing connection and amplification of the poetry and spoken word scenes in Naarm and the region. As Director of Development, I have been able to manage logistics of soliciting, promoting, and curating 41 events by working alongside a volunteer committee, and convenors and artists participating in the festival. www.sonicpoetryfestival.com

It all started with a collection of short fiction I picked up at a launch in Buffalo, NY in 2013. Ben Brindise's novella was haunting, beautiful, but there were typos, grammatical errors, and even some continuity mistakes that needed to be tweaked. I handed him his copy back with suggested changes and that was that. Since then, I've been lucky enough to continue to provide developmental and line-level editing for short fiction, poetry collections, non-fiction books, and academic articles. The mission is for your readers to never know my name. The mission is for your story to hit the page exactly the way you want it to - in your voice, refined.

As a Poetry Editor for Booth, I work with our Editorial Team to promote two primary goals. First, we're trying to put out the best publication we can. This means that we spend a lot of time soliciting writers we love, evaluating and assigning submissions received in Submittable to our reading teams, and supporting the writers we work with. Second, we are a resource for Butler University MFA students to learn about the literary world, to continue honing their craft, and to have robust conversations around evaluating work. As someone who benefitted greatly from my time as a Booth reader, I have been able to give back to Booth by facilitating Poetry Craft Meetings, a new initiative that gives poetry readers a space to ask the hard questions and develop their own answers. I am incredibly lucky to help Booth continue doing the good work balancing pedagogy, literary citizenship, and a high-quality product. https://booth.butler.edu/

Booth is a literary magazine run by Butler University’s faculty and graduate writing program that publishes monthly web content and bi-annual print anthologies. As a Poetry Reader, I worked with a team of five to eight other readers to assess thousands of submissions each year. As a publication that doesn't believe in the term "slush pile," each submission was given a careful analysis through our Submittable portal, culminating in a monthly Roundtable discussion where we whittled down the final few for publication. https://booth.butler.edu/

The Butler Bridge program connects Butler students with young creative writers in the Indianapolis community for mentorship, fellowship, and fun! As a Butler Bridge Mentor during the COVID-19 crisis, I've been privileged to facilitate workshops for middle and high school students over Zoom once a month. The Bridge students embraced the change to remote learning - utilizing chat, breakout room functions, and even supplemental prompt technologies to continue to connect, to imagine, to learn, and to grow.

As a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Butler University, I was given the opportunity to work with three different professors teaching four undergraduate level courses: EN 219 (CNF Workshop); EN 410 (Creative Writing Capstone); EN 493 (Madness in the Long Nineteenth Century); FYS 101 (First Year Seminar). Under the generous guidance of each professor, I was able to co-develop syllabi, facilitate creative writing workshops, create and implement a website portfolio final assignment, and conference with students one-on-one to deliver feedback for assessment and continued student success.As a fellow during the COVID-19 crisis, I was able to build on my in-person pedagogical skillset by working with asynchronous technologies such as Canvas, Zoom, Google G Suite, Weebly, Issuu, and Nearpod.

Copywriters at Flight Digital Marketing Agency wear many hats. Flight works with mid-range clients across a host of industries including hospitality, distribution, athletics, and leisure. As a result, I tailor both voice and content to the needs of each client and each project. Utilizing Mailchimp, Hootsuite, ClickUp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and loom.ly, I have written and managed newsletter campaigns, social media micro-content, blog posts, product descriptions, and even ghostwriting campaigns.

Working under the Academic Program Manager at Butler University's MFA in Creative Writing, I developed and implemented recruitment and engagement campaigns that were cross-posted to all of the MFA's official accounts. This included reach-outs to visiting writers for the 2018-2019 Visiting Writer's Series, "What We're Reading" features with interviews from current students, and event promotion utilizing graphics designed in Canva.

As Chief Editor with Crowd Ink, I helped to develop Crowd Ink’s business plan with mission statement, branding, media kit, and customized pitch decks, generating new business in 7 industries within 6 months. I also designed a social media plan to attract influencers and expand content distribution by collaborating with the Web Development Team and the Social Media Team (500,000+ unique page views/month). I was lucky enough to direct an incredible in-house editorial team of 10 staff writers as well as over 200 off-site contributors. https://crowdink.com/author/sam-ferrante/

Working directly under the CEO of Crowd Media, I was responsible for client accounts in the fashion, food, coaching, and real estate sectors. Projects varied widely, but included social media micro-content creation and scheduling, landing page population, media kit creation and refinement, product descriptions, and email tree campaigns. I was lucky enough to collaborate with an incredible UX/UI and Tech team to optimize all of our content and design some really beautiful branding materials. https://www.crowdmediagroup.com.au/

As a Workshop Facilitator with Melbourne Spoken Word, I was privileged to work with adult poets at all levels looking to refine their craft for both the page and the stage. As a member of a creative and capable board, I had the opportunity to help develop the first Melbourne Spoken Word Prize, an annual event to showcase heavy-hitters from across Melbourne. https://melbournespokenword.com/