Forward into the 21st century

Mr. Gilmore's books fall into a growing genre known as street lit. With titles like "Push," "Topless" and "Platinum Dolls," they are saturated with sex, violence, gangsters and drug dealers and take place in prison and on the mean streets of New York City. He began writing them while serving a sentence for check-cashing fraud in federal prison in New Jersey. When he was released in 2003, he walked out with 30 completed manuscripts. So far, he has had about a dozen printed. He aggressively markets and distributes them on the buses to prison, sidewalks, the Internet and in small bookstores.

And as he told the bus passengers, he signed a four-book contract with St. Martin's for a sum in "the low six figures," said Monique Patterson, a senior editor there. Ms. Patterson said the decision to sign Mr. Gilmore was not only a recognition of his proven ability as a storyteller and potential as a stylist, but also an indication of large publishing houses' surging interest in street lit.

From a NYT article on the progress of "street lit."

Previously: African-American authors' obsession with sex, drugs, etc. might be just a phase

writers, street lit, African American fiction