POPULAR NOVELIST E. LYNN HARRIS DIES AT 54

Category: Chronicle Archives Published on Thursday, 23 July 2009 20:00 Written by Michigan Chronicle

E. Lynn Harris, author of such best-selling books as “Invisible Life,” “And This Too Shall Pass: A Novel” and “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir,” died today at age 54 due to a “serious health setback” as described by his publicist while he was out promoting his new book, “Basketball Jones,” on a West Coast book tour.

Harris, whose first name was Everette, was born in Flint, Michigan, and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the rest of his siblings.  He graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where he was reportedly the first Black male cheerleader.  After he graduated, he sold computers for IBM for over a decade until he decided to embark upon becoming an author.  

His first book, “Invisible Life,” was self-published but was soon picked up by Anchor Books, an imprint of publishing giant Doubleday.  His success as a writer was almost unprecedented, due to the fact that he was openly living life as a African-American homosexual author.  “Invisible Life” chronicles the gay lifestyle, which is still mostly considered taboo within the African-American community.

"If you were African-American and you were gay, you kept your mouth shut and you went on and did what everybody else did," he said. "You had girlfriends, you lived a life that your parents had dreamed for you."

Lynn, as would be expected, had a large gay following, but he was also very popular with Black women.  He was a contributing writer to Essence magazine, the Washington Post,  and became an authority on the “down low” phenomenon — bisexual men living as heterosexual men.