Joan Schenkar, geboren 1952 in Seattle, ist eine amerikanische Schriftstellerin und Dramatikerin. Sie hat Literatur und Kunst theorie studiert und war Gründerin und künstlerische Leiterin von Force Majeure Productions, New York, die Filme und Theaterstücke produzieren.

Die maßgebliche Biographie über das mysteriöse Leben und die phantastische Schöpfungskraft von Patricia Highsmith. Minutiös recherchiert und außergewöhnlich vergnüglich zu lesen, mit einem Bildteil und vielen zeitgenössischen Dokumenten im Anhang. Das Standardwerk zum Ausnahmetalent unter den Kriminalschriftstellerinnen.

Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt is now a major motion picture (Carol) starring Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska, directed by Todd HayesA 2010 New York Times Notable BookA 2010 Lambda Literary Award WinnerA 2009 Edgar Award NomineeA 2009 Agatha Award NomineeA Publishers Weekly Pick of the WeekPatricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.