Before I was a writer I was a baker. (More on that here.)

In 2011 I began working at the Chicago Reader, first as an editorial assistant, then staff writer, and finally as deputy editor, coordinating the culture section and overseeing the copy desk. I left the Reader in 2014 and moved with my partner to a tiny town in southwest Ohio, where I freelanced for publications including the Chicago Tribune, Chicago magazine, the Awl, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Epicurious, and others. In our free time we gardened and raised three ducks.

After a few years, we moved to New York, where I took a job as senior writer at Epicurious, the food and cooking website. I'm currently doing a sort of at-large thing for the site, and floating around the south and midwest (with dog in tow) looking for things to write about.

 Some clips are here.

And: I'm on e-mail! At samuel [dot] lwe [at] gmail [dot] com.

Twitter too: