Eric Jerome Dickey Dies

A celebrated New York Times best-selling author has unfortunately passed away.

Source: Jody Cortes / Getty

Contemporary urban fiction icon Eric Jerome Dickey, known for his books including “Milk In My Coffe”, “Between Lovers” “Friends and Lovers”, “Cheaters” and more, has died.

The news was confirmed by CBS News journalist Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post front page Editor Phil Lewis who both spoke with the author’s publicist. The publicist confirmed that the celebrated writer was “battling a long illness” before his death on Sunday, January 3, 2021.

NewsOne notes the news was initially shared and confirmed via Dickey’s cousin La Verne Madison Fuller.

The author was just 59-years-old.

Eric Jerome Dickey is being remembered by the likes of Daily Beast Editor-At-Large Goldie Taylor who considered him a friend and mentor and Essence who lauded his book “Sister, Sister” as one of their 50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Last 50 Years.

The Memphis, Tennesse’s native’s twenty-nine novels landed him a spot on USA Today’s 100 Black Novelists and Fiction Writers You Should Read list. An official bio for him notes that his career began with short stories but he ultimately fulfilled his creative yearnings through long-form novels.

Eric says, “I’d set out to do a ten-page story and it would go on for three hundred pages.” So Eric kept writing and reading and sending out query letters for his novels for almost three years until he finally got an agent. “Then a door opened,” Eric says. “And I put my foot in before they could close it.” And that door has remained opened, as Eric Jerome Dickey’s novels have placed him on the map as one of the best writers of contemporary urban fiction.

What a legend.

R.I.P. to Eric Jerome Dickey.