E. Lynn Harris: writer on the storm fort

FORT WORTH, Texas - Three years ago, E. Lynn Harris had everything he thought he wanted.

One of the bestselling black authors in history, Harris drove a Mercedes, owned a mansion in Atlanta, had an apartment in Trump Tower and had carved out a prominent place in the Manhattan social scene. The former Dallas computer salesman who, not so long ago, only dreamed of getting published had now forged the way for other African-American writers to make bestseller lists with entertaining, sexy fiction that rivaled the best efforts of Danielle Steel and Sandra Brown.

Perhaps most satisfying of all, Harris was finally able to give his mother, who'd raised him in Little Rock while working as a maid and then in a factory, everything she could ever need.

But amid the accolades, Harris says, he lost his way. For the second time in his life he felt the onslaught of crippling depression, a condition that previously drove him to alcohol abuse and even an attempted suicide.

"When you experience entitlement for a while, you start to constantly expect it," Harris says, sipping bottled water in his hotel room during a recent visit to Dallas. "With some of the things I did, you'd think I was brought up by wealthy parents. One time in Atlanta I was at my place there, which is built on four levels. The air-conditioning in my bedroom went out. I called somebody to fix it and was told they couldn't get there for three days, and my reaction was, 'What? I'm E. Lynn Harris! I don't want to wait three days!'

"I got a suite at a fancy hotel when I had the rest of a big house still air-conditioned," Harris says, bemused. "And I was a kid raised with no air-conditioning, and in the summer when I tried to sleep I'd have the mosquitoes eating my a--. How ridiculous was I acting?"

After turning out about a book a year for a decade, Harris stepped away from the literary limelight. He needed a break, and a new perspective on life.

Little did he know he'd find it at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas.

When he was invited to spend a semester teaching writing and African-American literature in Fayetteville, he hesitated, then realized he had to try something different.

"I was at a difficult time in my life," Harris says now. "I had to get away from being a celebrity writer. I wasn't enjoying my success. I was in a bad place with my partner. We were breaking up after a seven-year relationship. I figured I'd rent an apartment in Fayetteville, have my classes, and be gone."

He ended up staying three years and is going back for a fourth.

Meanwhile, he'll hit the road in May to promote a new novel - re-energized and ready to reclaim his place as one of America's bestselling authors.

And he'll need that rediscovered optimism to face down critics who have characterized his writing as "smut" that degrades African-Americans. In January, Nick Chiles, the editor of Odyssey Colour magazine and co-author of the literary novel "A Love Story," wrote a New York Times commentary complaining of "smut ... being produced by and for my people, and it is called 'literature.'"

Neither Harris nor any other prominent black author was specifically identified by Chiles, but Harris realizes he's part of the group being criticized. (Kimberla Lawson Roby, Harris' friend and fellow bestselling black author of pop fiction, says she knows exactly why Chiles would complain: "He didn't sell as many books as he hoped to. What other reason could there be?")

"I know I write to entertain," Harris says, exchanging his usual broad smile for a grimace. "But I get people to reading, and that's better than not reading at all. I don't know why people would let that bother them."

Harris says he knows who to thank for his new, relaxed outlook on life and fame.

"I owe it to my kids," he says, referring to his UA students and the members of the school's cheerleading squads, which he has helped coach. (When Harris matriculated at UA from 1976-79, he was one of the first black cheerleaders in the old Southwest Conference).

Twenty-year-old Kelly Williams, who is a team captain, says she'd never read his books or even heard of Harris when he showed up to help with the cheerleading squad during her freshman year.

"First I Googled him, then I looked at his books," she says. "I thought they were really, sort of, interesting. But they didn't offend me. Even though I was never interested in writing myself, I ended up taking both his courses. I've talked to him about everything in my life, and I want to be his friend for the rest of it. All of us think we're so lucky he came into our lives."

Everette Lynn Harris was no stranger to depression in fall 2003 when he drove his Mercedes convertible from Atlanta to Fayetteville. In "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," his memoir published the previous year, he included a description of a 1990 suicide attempt. In the hospital after surviving the overdose of sleeping pills, he faced the facts.

Though Harris earned a six-figure income, he hated his professional life in computer sales. "Self-destructive behavior," mostly alcohol-related, was wrecking his health. He had pretended long enough to be, as he put it, "the perfect black boy," and decided he would openly identify himself as gay. And he would pursue his dream of being an author.

In 1991, Harris self-published his novel "Secret Life" after being spurned by publishers leery of its gay characters. Unencumbered by job responsibilities - he'd left corporate life behind and was living off his savings - Harris peddled the book in every independent, black-owned bookstore he could find. A copy found its way to Anchor Books in New York City, which offered to publish "Secret Life" in paperback. Its national sales success convinced hardcover publishing giant Doubleday to offer Harris a modest contract for more novels.

"Just As I Am" sold respectably, and Harris' third novel, "This Too Shall Pass," hit the New York Times bestseller list.

It made Harris rich, and a hero to a whole new generation of black writers.

During the early to mid- '90s, Harris and Terry McMillan ("Waiting to Exhale") were among the few black writers to regularly make bestseller lists as crafters of "pop" fiction. Literary works by African-American luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Richard Wright and James Baldwin were assigned in college classes; Harris' racy escapist fiction was what fans crammed into their carryalls for a weekend away.

"That was an important step," says Sonsyrea Tate, editor of The Washington Informer, a District of Columbia publication that focuses on African-American issues and artists. "It helped open doors for writers like me, when I was able to get my first book published in 1996. He proved a black author who could tell good stories could succeed, and that set such an important example."

Harris became a mentor to younger authors - Travis Hunter and Roby, among others, describe him as a friend and confidant.

"He felt responsibility to others as well as himself," says Tate. "And though he was open about his own life, his books did not just cater to the gay and lesbian crowd."

"I'm writing about people and the way they act and feel," Harris says. "That cuts across race and sexual orientation."

A few days into his tenure in Fayetteville, he got a call from an assistant athletic director who wanted to know if Harris might be willing to put his cheerleading expertise to use and assist the coach of the current squad.

Glumly, Harris accepted. He was still feeling depressed, but at least coaching would be better than moping around his apartment, he figured.

Now in February 2006, Harris is counting the days until he returns to the college campus for his fourth fall semester. He'll teach, joyfully - and he'll coach the cheerleaders through one more season.

To them, he's Coach E., close friend to all and second father to many.

"It's been freeing for me to find these young people accepting me, embracing me, because of who I am," Harris says. "I wasn't putting on any act. I wasn't separated from everybody else in a fancy apartment. We were all together all the time, just enjoying each other."

As a teacher, Harris is no educational drone.

In his African-American literature course, students hear about James Baldwin - and current bestselling author Michael Eric Dyson, who's been known in print to dis Bill Cosby. Alice Walker gets her props, but Coach E.'s assigned reading list has included Karrine Steffans' "Confessions of a Video Vixen." Rewards for the best papers have included autographed copies of Janet Jackson CDs. Coach E. thinks his kids will be more open to reading the writers he admires if they feel he has respect for the authors and artists they like most.

At the same time, Harris' students have made sure their teacher knows they care about him for who and what he is.

"A lot of us went out and read his other books, read his memoir," Williams says. "Cheerleaders are always in the public eye and it's hard, so what he was willing to write about himself and make public made me appreciate him so much. In that way he's teaching us to be honest about who we are. After reading (`What Becomes of the Brokenhearted') I said to him, 'I loved you before, but I love you more now.'"

Harris has caught the writing bug again. Because he's relaxed, story ideas are flowing.

During his Fayetteville sojourn, he's not only completed "I Say A Little Prayer" but a second novel as well. It's ready for the editors at Doubleday, and Harris is already planning his next tale.

Harris says his fourth semester in residence this fall may be the last, but not because he's in a hurry to leave.

"I met Kelly and many of the current cheerleaders as freshmen," he says. "Now they're seniors, and after graduation as they go on with their lives it may be time to go on with mine."

If E. Lynn Harris has changed a lot in three years, so has the literary landscape and, in particular, his chosen genre of fiction.

Increasingly racy novels from black writers have acquired the label of "street lit," and while they've developed a following they've also attracted strident attacks from critics and African-American authors who think their more literary fiction is being overshadowed by printed smut.

Previously, that would have bothered Harris much more; he's always considered his fiction to essentially be morality plays where sex plays a part but self-respect is ultimately the issue. "When I Say A Little Prayer" hits bookstores in May, Harris says, he's prepared to greet his fans and face critics.

"I've realized again how fortunate I am to be able to write. I've got better perspective in so many ways," he says. "Up in Fayetteville, the teacher learned some lessons, too."

There's additional joy. After refusing for years to leave her old neighborhood, Harris' mother, Etta Mae Harris, has allowed him to buy her a home in a tony, gated Little Rock neighborhood. She's just moved in.

"I'm not used to it yet," she says. "And it's got this glass back door I don't like."

Harris says his mother doesn't realize yet she finally lives in a safe community.

"She thinks somebody will break in through that door," he says, laughing. "I tell her, 'You're not in a place where you have to be worried anymore.'"

And thanks to Coach E.'s students, neither is he.

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(c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.