American writer Nella Larsen was BOTD in 1891. Born in Chicago in a mixed-race family to a Danish mother and an Afro-Caribbean father, she was raised in America and Denmark, and studied at Fisk University and the University of Copenhagen. After training as a nurse, she married Elmer Imes, an African-American physicist, and moved to Harlem in the 1920s. Larsen became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance, befriending W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and Carl van Vechten. She won critical acclaim for her 1928 autobiographical novel Quicksand, followed in 1929 by Passing, an erotically-charged novella about a Black woman’s obsession with her childhood friend who is passing as white. After a plagiarism accusation, Larsen gave up writing and travelled in Europe for several years. Returning to New York in 1937, she divorced her husband and worked as a nurse for the rest of her life. She died in 1964, aged 72. Little is known about her sexuality or intimate relationships. Rediscovered in recent years, she is now recognised as a major American writer, praised for her exploration of racial and sexual politics. Passing has achieved cult status both for its insights into racism and its thrumming lesbian subtext, and was successfully filmed by Rebecca Hall in 2021, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.