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American author of Invisible Life and What Becomes of the Brokenhearted was 54
E. Lynn Harris
E. Lynn Harris, novelist of the black gay condition dies
E. Lynn Harris, the bestselling author of books such as Just As I Am and A Love of My Own, has died in Los Angeles aged 54. His novels about lawyers, businessmen and athletes showed his readers, many of them young, black, professional women, a new side of African-American life: the secret world of bisexual black men living as heterosexuals. Since his first was published, Invisible Life, in 1994, he had 10 consecutive books on the New York Times best-seller list.
His publicist Laura Gilmore told Associated Press that Harris died on Thursday night after being stricken at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. A few days earlier he had fallen ill on a train from his home in Atlanta to Los Angeles, but he had seen a doctor and seemed fine. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County coroner said the cause of death had not yet been determined.
His obituary by Bruce Weber in the New York Times said: "His books married the superficial glamour of jet-setting potboilers with an emotional candor that shed light on a segment of society that had received little attention: black men on the down low - that is men who are publicly heterosexual but secretly have sex with men."
