LOS ANGELES - A publicist for E. Lynn Harris says the author has died at age 54.

Publicist Laura Gilmore says Harris died Thursday night after being stricken while at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Gilmore says a cause of death had not yet been determined. A coroners' official in Los Angeles said only that a man matching Harris' name and date of birth had died Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Harris was a pioneer of gay black fiction and a literary entrepreneur who rose from self-publishing to best-selling status.