American writer Chuck Palahniuk was BOTD in 1962. Born and raised in Washington, he studied at the University of Oregon, then worked as a diesel mechanic and a carer in a hospice. He published his first novel Fight Club in 1996, a nihilistic tale about disaffected men forming underground fighting clubs that spiral into political radicalism. While critically well-received, the book failed to find an audience, until the success of David Fincher’s 1999 film adaptation starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Playing on the homoerotic attraction between the two male protagonists, the film became a cult hit, with many of Palahniuk’s lines (“The first rule of Fight Club is… You do not talk about Fight Club“) passing into the cultural vernacular. His 2001 novel Choke, a bleak story about a male sex addict with Freudian mother issues, was filmed in 2008. He provoked controversy after a 2003 public reading of his short story Guts, a gruesome account of a boy’s intestines being sucked out by a swimming pool filter, in which 40 audience members fainted. He has also published essays, graphic novels and adult colouring books. Palahniuk’s punchy writing style and Nietzschean themes of violence and emasculated male rage led many to assume he was straight (as did his references in interviews to his “wife”). In 2003, he admitted to a magazine interviewer that his “wife” was actually a man. Palahniuk has lived with his partner in rural Washington since the early 1990s, describing themselves as a “blue-collar couple”. His recent work includes the novels Not Forever, But For Now and Shock Induction, and the essay collection Consider This: Moments In My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different.