Essence.com: E. Lynn Harris Dead at 54

A very sad day! E. Lynn Harris left us way too soon, but his legacy will be felt by those whom he inspired. RIP brother!

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E. Lynn Harris, whose self-published 1991 debut novel "Invisible Life" novel endeared him to millions of readers, died on July 24, 2009. He was 54 years old. According to the Arkansas Times, Harris suffered a "serious health setback" while on a West Coast book tour for his recent novel "Basketball Jones." In subsequent novels such as "Just As I Am," "If This World Were Mine" and "Any Way The Wind Blows," featuring the glamorous and gritty lives of Black strivers, closeted and openly gay men, the former IBM executive became one of the country's most popular writers, whose book signings were often standing-room only events.

In a glossy style that combined elements of posh 1950s melodramas, daytime soap operas and homespun morality tales, Harris detailed the fictitious lives of young and stunningly attractive African-Americans, navigating their way through the NFL and NBA; Hollywood and Broadway; magazines and the music industry. Readers eagerly anticipated the return of Harris fictitious fixtures such as closeted attorney Raymond Tyler, Jr., Johns ‘Basil' Henderson, and Yancey Harrinngton, and propelled nearly all of his novels onto the New York Times Best-Sellers List. Harris, who had more than 2 million copies of his novels in print, ranks as one of the most popular African-American novelists of all time.

Everette Lynn Harris, who often spoke in a soft, Southern drawl courtesy of his Little Rock, Arkansas upbringing, always dreamed of becoming an author. His road to his true calling wouldn't come easy, yet would inspire countless writers to tell their stories. Born in Flint, Michigan, Harris grew up in Little Rock. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, his 2003 memoir, documented his painful childhood, including abuse by his stepfather and a 1990 attempted suicide. For nearly a decade before he tried to end his life, Harris lived a double life: He was a closeted, successful IBM executive by day. After hours, he slept with men on the "down low" and fell into a depression. A close friend asked Harris to write his story. In 1991, Harris wrote "Invisible Life," which received countless rejection letters from mainstream publishers.

In a now legendary story, Harris, who had relocated to Atlanta, sold the novel out of the trunk of his car at local beauty parlors. The novel soon landed in the hands of Martha Levin at Doubleday, Harris' long-time publisher. Harris' story inspired dozens of authors to self-publish their novels. ESSENCE Magazine was one of the first publications to feature Harris' work and he began a long affiliation with the publication.

He visited our officies last year, met with interns and signed copies of Basketball Jones, and gave us a sneak peek of his latest novel featuring Yancey, including the first working lines of the novel: "How did this b---- get my life?"

Harris single-handedly carved out a space for contemporary African-American male novelists such as Eric Jerome Dickey, Colin Channer, RM Johnson, Carl Weber, Van Whitfield, and Omar Tyree. He was a tireless champion for the Hurston/Wright Foundation and had his own foundation. Harris was known in the literary community for his generosity to his fans (often remembering birthdays and holidays); his love of the Arkansas Razorbacks (he was the first Black male cheerleader for the school), and his support for burgeoning writers. He combined his passion for both of the latter by returning to his alma mater as an adjunct professor, where he taught as recently as last fall. He divided his time between Atlanta and Arkansas, but ultimately, always made the time for his readers, who he credited with saving and changing his life.

SF Chronicle: "The Long Fall" by Walter Mosley

I can't wait to read this book! Mosley is one of my favorite writers, and I'm proud to say he's a distinguished alumnus of my MFA program - The City College of New York!

Here's a review by the San Francisco Chronicle!
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The Long Fall

By Walter Mosley

(Riverhead Books; 306 pages; $25.95)

In his first novel set in contemporary New York City, Walter Mosley, author of "Blonde Faith" and "The Right Mistake," introduces readers to a new series character - the middle-aged, literally low-rent private detective Leonid McGill. McGill is an African American, like Easy Rawlins, the protagonist of Mosley's period Los Angeles mysteries, but he's a very different kind of investigator, and "The Long Fall" is a different kind of Mosley book.

Married to a woman he doesn't love, raising kids not his own, yearning for the sexy building manager charged with breaking his way-below-marketvalue office lease, McGill needs the cash that will come once he unravels the new identity of a troubled kid formerly known as B-Brain. A more upscale detective with a mysterious client wants that information, but McGill isn't at all sure he can trust his colleague not to make life difficult for a guy who seems to have done well for himself since leaving his trouble-making buddies behind.

Once a tool of the local mob, McGill carries a large enough load of guilt as it is, and he can't afford any additional karmic burden. In addition to worrying about the erstwhile B-Brain, McGill has to contend with a mobster who wants a potentially deadly favor, plus his own teenage son's apparent plan to kill the father of a female friend. No wonder McGill has recurring nightmares of being trapped in a burning building.

There's a lot of plot to keep track of in "The Long Fall," but the pleasures of the novel come not mainly from its narrative mechanics but from McGill's first-person perspective on race and class in an America on the verge of electing its first black president. People around McGill tend to underestimate him because of his age, his short stature and the color of his skin. Again and again, he proves that, despite being pushed down, he's a contender. It's hard not to like a detective who sums up a case thusly: "The scenario was simple, it just didn't make sense, like a live cat sealed in a glass globe, or the United States declaring peace."

Starting with Leonid McGill, who bears an obvious legacy as a red diaper baby, Mosley has a lot of fun with characters' names in "The Long Fall." Which is good, because the cast of this slender novel expands almost to the point of unwieldiness. It's particularly amusing that McGill's unfaithful Nordic wife, a storm of destruction in human form, is called Katrina. But then there's a character called Norman Fell, who evokes distracting visions of Mr. Roper on "Three's Company" every time he's mentioned. Inscrutable joke or simply a stray note?

"The Long Fall" accomplishes most of what an inaugural installment of a mystery series should. The three major plot strands are solidly developed and neatly resolved. McGill's quest for redemption, however, is far from over, but it will be interesting to watch it play out across a number of subsequent volumes.

If "The Long Fall" is overstuffed with incidental characters whose importance may not be obvious until later installments, that's a minor flaw. Having retired Easy Rawlins, Mosley has devised a worthy successor in Leonid McGill.