American writer David Leavitt was BOTD in 1961. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to an academic family, he grew up in Palo Alto, California. He studied at Yale University, where he began writing and publishing short stories in The New Yorker. His first short story collection Family Dancing, published in 1984 when he was 23, was critically acclaimed and nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is best known for his 1986 novel The Lost Language of Cranes, a drama about an interlinked group of gay characters in New York City, including a young gay man whose coming out forces his father to confront his own closeted homosexuality. Highly acclaimed for its complex depiction of sexual identity, familial relationships and its portrait of New York City during the HIV/AIDS crisis, it was adapted for television in 1991 by Sean Mathias and Nigel Finch, starring Brian Cox, Eileen Atkins, John Schlesinger and Ben Daniels. His 1993 novel While England Sleeps attracted unexpected notoriety after writer Stephen Spender sued him for allegedly plagiarising Spender’s memoir World Within World. Leavitt’s book was withdrawn and republished in revised form in 1995, with a preface in which Leavitt explaining his use of Spender’s work. The experience prompted his 1997 short story The Term Paper Artist. Leavitt has also published a biography of mathematician Alan Turing, and co-edited the Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories with Mark Mitchell. He lives in Florida, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Florida and edits the literary journal Subtropics.