Canadian playwright and filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald was BOTD in 1968. Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was raised in New Jersey by his mother after his parents’ divorce. He studied at the Cooper Union in New York and spent a semester at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After graduating, he moved to Halifax in Nova Scotia, where he worked in a Christian theatre collective. His 1997 feature film debut The Hanging Garden, a drama about a gay man returning home to his dysfunctional family in Nova Scotia, was highly acclaimed, winning prizes at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals and four Genie Awards, including best debut feature and screenplay. His next film Beefcake, a docu-drama about gay Physique photographer Bob Mizer, was originally commissioned for television but considered too sexually explicit for US broadcast, and was released in cinemas, debuting at Sundance and earning four Genie nominations. His other films include the AIDS-themed dramas The Event and 3 Needles, film adaptations of his play Cloudburst and Lee-Anne Poole’s play Splinters, and Stage Mother, a comedy about a conservative church choir director who inherits a drag club. Fitzgerald continues to live in Halifax. His relationship status is unknown.