English writer and critic Adam Mars-Jones was BOTD in 1954. Born in London to a middle-class family, he studied at Cambridge University. His first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture, was published in 1981, winning the W. Somerset Maugham Award. His 1987 story collection The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis, co-authored with American writer Edmund White, focused on the experiences of gay men living with HIV/AIDS, a theme explored in his 1993 debut novel The Waters of Thirst. He became more well-known as a literary critic and reviewer, writing regularly for the London Review of Books, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. He was awarded the inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Award for his demolition of Michael Cunningham‘s novel By Nightfall. In 2008, he returned to fiction with Pilcrow, the first part of a projected four-volume mega-novel about the life of a disabled gay man. The second volume, Cedilla, was published in 2011, though he has yet to finish the series. His 2015 memoir Kid Gloves recounted his difficult relationship with his father and his family’s struggle to accept his homosexuality. His 2020 novella Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem, about a closeted gay man in 1970s England who becomes the sexual submissive of a handsome biker, was highly acclaimed, and adapted into the 2025 film Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton and starring Alexander Skarsgård. Mars-Jones lives in London with his long-term partner Keith King, with whom he entered into a civil partnership in 2008.