Sam Collier is a playwright and theater artist originally from Washington D.C. She holds a PhD in theater and performance studies from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her plays include The Light That's Left, which was developed with the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company's Writers Group; Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King, which was the winner of the 2019 Urbanite Theatre Modern Works Festival and was produced by Feather Fall Theatre Company at the Dairy Arts Center in 2025; and A Hundred Circling Camps, which was commissioned by the Goodman Theater Playwrights Unit and produced by Dogteam Theatre Project at Atlantic Stage 2 in 2024. Her plays have also been produced and developed by Star Stuff Theatre, New College of Florida, Barclay Performing Arts, Siena Heights University, the UC Davis Ground & Field Festival, Theatre NOVA, and Theater Nyx. She has held residencies with Hewnoaks Artist Residency, the Iowa Lakeside Lab, and the National Writers Series. Sam js also a director and has directed productions of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and Antigone, Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine's for the University of Colorado Boulder; and Nina Morrison's play Féminaal at the University of Iowa.

Sam's research focuses on theater about climate change, and she is especially interested in the creative possibilities of multispecies artistic collaboration. In 2025, she developed an interspecies, multimedia work, Canine Capture, through a residency grant at the CU Atlas B2 performance space, in collaboration with digital media artist Brad Gallagher, choreographer Anna Pillot, a motion capture system, and her dog, Auberon. She continues to explore how including nonhuman perspectives and engaging animals as creative collaborators can expand the sensory, temporal, and conceptual terrain in the stories we tell about climate change.

Sam is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Upcoming: in the fall of 2026, Sam has been commissioned to develop a new play about the 150-year history of the University of Colorado, in collaboration with Tectonic Theater Project and students at CU Boulder.