Breaking: Author E. Lynn Harris dies at age 54

According to the Arkansas Times, best-selling author E. Lynn Harris died while doing a West Coast book tour to promote his latest novel Basketball Jones about the gay lover of an NBA star.(Read our 2006 interview with Harris here.)

Harris was truly an amazing story and made a considerable mark on the literary world with his twelve novels about contemporary gay and straight African-Americans. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Harris' career — which began with the self-publication of  Invisible Life, a novel he sold out of the trunk of his car to women in beauty shops — was the fact that his very gay-inclusive novels managed to cross over to a very wide and mainstream audience. Indeed, Harris was especially popular with female black readers. 

In addition to landing on the New York Times Bestseller List numerous times, Harris had a long list of accolades to his credit including the novel Just As I Am being named the Novel of the Year Prize by the Blackboard African-American Bestsellers, Inc. If This World Were Mine won the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence and Harris also won a Lambda Literary Award in 2005.

A cause of death has yet to be reported at this time.

Let me add, I had the privilege of meeting E. Lynn and he was a very kind and gracious man who will be missed.