American writer E. Lynn Harris was BOTD in 1955. Born in Flint, Michigan, he grew up in Little Rock, Arkansaw, and was one of the first African-American students to attend a formerly segregated high school. He studied at the University of Arkansas and became a computer salesman, living variously in Texas, Washington, D.C. and Georgia. He self-published his first novel Invisible Life in 1991, a coming-of-age tale about a closeted African-American man. An extraordinarily prolific writer, he published 13 more novels over the next 20 years, chronicling urban African-American gay life throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Ten of his books made the New York Times’ bestseller list, making him one of the most successful African-American and gay authors of his time. He died in 2009 aged 54. In 2019, he was posthumously inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honour at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.