E. Lynn Harris facts for kids

E. Lynn Harris (née Everette Lynn Jeter; June 20, 1955 – July 23, 2009) was an American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African-American men who were gay. He authored ten consecutive books that made The New York Times Best Seller list, making him among the most successful African-American or gay authors of his era.

Biography

Born Everette Lynn Jeter in Flint, Michigan, Harris moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, with his mother at the age of 3. Upon his mother's marriage to Ben Harris, his surname was changed to Harris. By the time he was 13 years old, his mother divorced his stepfather.

Harris was one of the first African-American students at Forest Heights Junior High and Hall High School in Little Rock. Harris had homes in Houston, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In his writings, Harris maintained a poignant motif, occasionally emotive, that incorporated vernacular and slang from popular culture. Harris became the first black male cheerleader as well as the first black yearbook editor while attending the University of Arkansas. After graduation, he became a computer salesman with IBM, AT&T, and Hewlett-Packard for 13 years living in Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. In 1990s, Harris relieved himself of his salesman duties and quit in order to begin writing his first novel.

Harris was initially unable to land a book deal with a publishing house for his first work, Invisible Life, so he published it himself and sold copies from his car trunk. He later was published by Doubleday, and ten of his novels achieved New York Times bestseller status.

He returned to the University of Arkansas in 2004 to teach African American Fiction, quickly becoming a student favorite. Alongside fiction, Harris had also penned a personal memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.

In June 2019, Harris was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

List of novels

• Invisible Life (1991)
• Just As I Am (1994)
• And This Too Shall Pass (1996)
• If This World Were Mine (1997)
• Abide With Me (1999)
• Not A Day Goes By (2000)
• Any Way the Wind Blows (2002)
• What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir (2003)
• A Love of My Own (2003)
• I Say A Little Prayer (2006)
• Just Too Good to Be True (2008)
• Basketball Jones (2009)
• Mama Dearest (2009)
• In My Father's House (2010)
• No One in the World (2012), released posthumously as a collaborative venture with author R. M. Johnson.

Death

Harris died on July 23, 2009, while in Los Angeles, California, for a business meeting. He was found unconscious at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. According to the Office of the Los Angeles County Coroner, he died of heart disease complicated by a hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure.