Canadian soprano, voice teacher, and poet Samara Garfinkle grew up in Ottawa, ON and is now based in her birthplace of Montreal, QC.
She holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) from Carleton University and a Master of Music from the University of Ottawa, where she studied under the tutelage of Christiane Riel. She has also studied privately with Dominique Labelle. She is the recipient of the 2019 Harry Brown Senior Scholarship for the Kiwanis Music Festival (Capital Region), and the 2016 NATS Senior Scholarship.
Samara is the vocal coach for the band Blank Notion, and she collaborates with pianist and composer Michael Darling in creating contemporary art songs with their duo Darling & Garfinkle, set to the work of various poets, including her own.
Samara has had her poetry published with Lantern Magazine, Columba Poetry, Yolk Literary, The Nelligan Review, and Crab Apple Literary. Her debut chapbook, Dual Realms, was released with Cactus Press in the summer of 2022. She has been a facilitator for McGill's Poetry Matters series, and a featured performer and poet for events such as The Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, The Words and Music Show for the Quebec Writers' Federation, The Argo Bookshop Reading Series, The Lawn Chair Soirée, and others. In 2022, she became the new host and co-coordinator of SpeakUp: The Montreal Interactive Poetry Exchange, a monthly reading series with featured readers and audience participation in the form of discussion and Q&A.
Samara models for Canadian hyperrealist painter Sheryl Luxenburg, and is prominent in her In the Shower and In The Shower Part Two series.
Deeply fascinated with the relationship between somatic psychology and voice work, as well as creative writing and psychological symbolism, Samara is currently pursuing a second Bachelor's degree in Psychology at Concordia University.