Sam Elkin

Sam Elkin is a writer, radio maker and community lawyer. In 2024, he published Detachable Penis: A Queer Legal Saga (Upswell) which was shortlisted for the John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing in the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Sam Elkin reviews ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle!: April Ashley and the pursuit of a lovely life’ by Jacqueline Kent and Tom Roberts

April 2025, no. 474 • 25 February 2025

At a time when President Donald Trump seeks to extinguish the legal recognition of trans and gender diverse people, Bonjour, Mademoiselle! and the life of April Ashley feel unexpectedly topical. Ashley, best known in Australia for her role in Corbett v Corbett, a precedent-setting divorce case that set back the legal right of trans people for generations, is the subject of a new biography by Jacqu ... (read more)

Sam Elkin reviews 'Between Me and Myself: A memoir of murder, desire and the struggle to be free' by Sandra Willson, edited by Rebecca Jennings

October 2022, no. 447 • 27 September 2022

What could compel a woman to murder a complete stranger? This is the obvious question posed by Sandra Willson’s execution-style murder of Sydney taxi driver Rodney Woodgate in 1959 following the traumatic end of her lesbian relationship with a fellow trainee psychiatric nurse. It is something that Willson grapples with in her searing memoir, which she wrote over several decades. Posthumously edi ... (read more)