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Sandra Willson Sandra Willson i(A22547 works by)
Born: Established: 1939 Kensington, Randwick area, Sydney Eastern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales, ; Died: Ceased: 1999
Gender: Female
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1 3 y separately published work icon Between Me and Myself : A Memoir of Murder, Desire and the Struggle to Be Free Sandra Willson , Rebecca Jennings , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2021 20081813 2021 single work autobiography

'On 29 April 1959, Sandra Willson, a twenty-year-old trainee psychiatric nurse from Paddington, devastated by the break-up of her relationship with her female lover, left her home and hailed a taxi. Asking the driver to take her to a remote location on the coast near Cronulla, she waited until he had stopped to consult a map and then shot him in the back of the head.

'Found not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity and sentenced to detention at the ‘Governor’s Pleasure’, Willson spent the next seventeen years in prison and psychiatric hospitals, becoming the longest-serving woman prisoner in NSW.

'Her memoir, largely written in prison and now published for the first time, describes the events leading up to the shooting, the day itself and the years of incarceration that followed. Raw, compelling, Between Me and Myself is a fascinating insight into life on the social margins of post-war Sydney, an indictment of the justice system’s treatment of gay women, and a tragic story of abuse, mental illness, desire and repression.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1 Upon Looking Out the Window i "(i) Walk softly, my soul,", Sandra Willson , 1978 single work poetry
— Appears in: Walled Garden : Poems from NSW Prisons 1978; (p. 63-64)
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