Samantha Bennett is the president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. She grew up at the other end of Pennsylvania and has a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University and a master's in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon. Her checkered past includes stints at the Register Citizen of Torrington, Conn., and the New Haven Register. She was hired by the Post-Gazette in 1994 as a copy editor but has been assimilated into post-gazette.com as a Web-publisher for the Features department.

Sam has been writing her column since 1998 and has won a Matrix Award from Women in Communications and First Place, 2008, in her circulation category for Best Column from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors. Her work has also appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Toronto Star, the Montreal Gazette and the Baltimore Sun.

Her Thursday post-gazette.com column appears Sundays in the PG's Washington County and North print editions.