Samantha Leigh Allen

Allen was born in California and grew up in New Jersey.[1] She was raised in a conservative, Mormon household.[2][3] As a young adult she served as a Mormon missionary.[4] She officially left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 2008 and transferred from Brigham Young University to Rutgers University later that year.[2][5] She came out as a transgender woman in 2012.[6][7]

She has a Ph.D. in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a certificate in Psychoanalytic Studies from Emory University.[8][9] She was a recipient of a George W. Woodruff Fellowship while at Emory.[10] In 2013 she received the John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University Bloomington.[11] In 2014 she was a recipient of the Unsung Heroine Award from the Center for Women at Emory as well as a Transgender Advocate of the Year Award from Emory's Office of LGBT Life.[12]

Allen covered LGBTQ stories as a senior reporter for The Daily Beast and worked as a staff writer for Fusion TV's Sex + Life vertical.[11][13] She has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Out, CNN, and Crosscut.com.[12] Allen has also written for LGBTQ media outlets including Them and Logo TV's NewNowNext as a freelance writer.[14][15] She also writes a travel newsletter called Get Lost on Substack and co-hosts a podcast about the WNBA called Double W with Laurel Powell.[14]

In 2018 she received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism Article for her article on the cultural erasure of bisexual men. In 2019 she was nominated for a GLAAD Award her piece on non-binary inclusion in the workplace.[12] In 2018 Allen published Love & Estrogen with Amazon Original Stories, which is a biographical queer romantic comedy about meeting her wife at the Kinsey Institute.[12]

In 2019 she published the biography Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States, which won the Judy Turner Prize for Community Service at the Decatur Books Festival.[12][16] Her book focuses on LGBTQ communities in Utah, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi.[14][17][18][19]