You most likely have seen the film "The Talented Mr. Ripley", or perhaps Hitchcock’s "Strangers on a Train". Who was the author who created these chilling sociopaths? Patricia Highsmith, an American writer, born in Texas in 1921 to an absent father and a mother who didn’t want her.

Highsmith's complicated life and unsettling work are the subjects of Back Lane Studios' next Extraordinary Women event at the Revue Cinema. We will be screening the recent documentary "Loving Highsmith," based on her diaries, notebooks and recollections of her lovers, friends and family. Joining us for our Q&A is Janice Kulyk Keefer, author, detective fiction fan and former modernist literature prof at Guelph University.

Highsmith was gay, forced to conceal from her family and public her wild underground lifestyle and affairs – preferably with older, rich married women. She wrote 22 novels and short stories, inspiring more than two dozen film adaptations. She was addicted to alcohol, cigarettes and sex; she questioned her ability to love, acknowledging that her impossible quest likely centred on her mother. Highsmith could have been a character in her own novels, and, in fact, in the 1950s, she penned the quasi-autobiographical Carol, the first lesbian story with a happy ending.

How close to a true portrayal of this multi-faceted individual does "Loving Highsmith" get? Janice will help us assess the documentary and understand this author who created the dublicitous and murderous Mr. Ripley.