American writer Patricia Highsmith was BOTD in 1921. Born in Fort Worth, Texas to artist parents who divorced before she was born, she was raised in New York by her mother and stepfather. She studied Barnard College in New York City, then moved to Europe, eventually settling in Switzerland. In 1950, she published Strangers on a Train, a thriller about two men who agree to commit murders for each other. An immediate success, it was adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock, who gleefully teased out the story’s homoerotic subtext. Her next novel, the lesbian romance The Price of Salt, was published in 1952 under the pseudonym Clare Morgan, and loosely based on Highsmith’s affair with an older married woman. Notable for its portrayal of a same-sex relationship with a happy ending, it was re-released years later under Highsmith’s name and re-titled Carol. In 1955, she published The Talented Mr Ripley, the first of several books featuring the psychopathic and discreetly gay con-man Thomas Ripley, creating one of literature’s most compelling anti-heroes. Her novels, while highly successful, were often relegated to genre fiction (to Highsmith’s irritation), though she was widely admired by her peers, including Graham Greene who dubbed her “the poet of apprehension”. After attempting to cure herself of homosexuality via psychoanalysis and affairs with men, Highsmith eventually resigned herself to her sexuality, and had a series of unhappy relationships with women. She suffered from depression and alcoholism for much of her adult life, living alone and breeding snails (famously saying she preferred them to people). She died in 1995, aged 74. Her literary reputation has grown since her death, and her work continues to be dramatised, notably Todd Haynes’ 2015 film Carol (with a screenplay by Highsmith’s friend and protegé Phyllis Nagy) and multiple film and TV adaptations of the Ripley novels starring Alain Delon, Matt Damon, John Malkovich and Andrew Scott.