Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas was BOTD in 1943. Born in Aguas Claras in Holguin Province, he was raised in rural poverty, experimenting with sex with boys and girls when he was a child. In his teens, he joined the pro-Soviet Cuban guerrillas, and won a scholarship to La Pantoja polytechnic to study agricultural accounting. He moved to Havana in 1963 to study philosophy and literature at the Universidad de La Habana, working at the National Library and writing short stories in his spare time. He also became an expert navigator of Havana’s underground gay scene, later claiming to have had sex with over 5,000 men. His debut novel Singing From the Well won a literary prize, leading to a career as an editor and journalist. His writings and sexuality brought him into increasing conflict with Cuba’s Communist government, and he was imprisoned in 1974 for “ideological deviation”. He continued writing in prison, smuggling manuscripts out for overseas publication, and making money by writing love letters for illiterate inmates. In 1980, he joined the mass migration of political dissidents known as the Mariel boatlift, seeking political asylum in the United States. He settled in New York City with his boyfriend Lázaro Gómez Carriles, and continued writing and denouncing the Cuban regime. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, he committed suicide in 1990, aged 47. His memoir Antes que anochezca (Before Night Falls) was published in 1993, and became an international bestseller, adapted into a film in 2000 starring Javier Bardem as Arenas.