Samantha Leigh Allen

Samantha Leigh Allen is an American journalist and author. Allen worked as a senior reporter for The Daily Beast and now works as Senior Culture Editor at Them. In 2019 she published the nonfiction book Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States.

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 later became a Senior Culture Editor at Them.^[14] 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^[15] and Logo TV's NewNowNext as a freelance writer.^[16] 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.^[16]

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][17] Her book focuses on LGBTQ communities in Utah, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi.^{[16][18][19][20]}

Allen's first fiction novel, Patricia Wants to Cuddle, was published June 28, 2022 by Zando. It follows the final four contestants on a reality dating show as they encounter a creature named Patricia in the woods on a remote island.^[21][22]

On November 6, 2024, Allen's spouse, Corey Burke, was arrested for the murder of her father, who was found bludgeoned and stabbed in the Seattle house they shared.^[23][24][25]