Patricia Highsmith - Nominee

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”

– Patricia Highsmith

In 1952, under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan,” she published the landmark lesbian romance The Price of Salt. The book took lesbian pulp fiction to a new level of literacy and was one of the first American gay or lesbian novels to have a positive ending where, as Highsmith herself noted, “the two lovers actually came out alive at the end and with a fair amount of hope for a happy future… I am happy to think that it gave several thousand lonely and frightened people something to hang onto.” While subtle homoeroticism is a feature of much of her work, critics and fans have been most struck by the thought-provoking amorality of her stories, in which wrongdoing often goes unpunished and readers sometimes find themselves empathizing with the wrongdoers. In all, Highsmith wrote 20 crime novels, including five featuring the “Talented” and “Mysterious” Mr. Tom Ripley, as well as several collections of short crime fiction. But she is perhaps best known as the author of the celebrated psychological suspense novel Strangers on a Train (1949), which became an Alfred Hitchcock film-noir classic in 1951.