Author Bebe Moore Campbell Dies at 56 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES -- Bebe Moore Campbell, who penned several best-sellers including "Brothers and Sisters" and "What You Owe Me" as well as articles for The New York Times and The Washington Post, died Monday. She was 56.

Campbell died at home in Los Angeles from complications due to brain cancer, said publicist Linda Wharton Boyd. She was diagnosed with the disease in February.

"My wife was a phenomenal woman who did it her way," husband Ellis Gordon Jr. said in a statement. "She loved her family and her career as a writer.

Her books, most of which were fiction based on real-life stories, touched on racial and social divides while including the perspective of many ethnic groups.

One of her first novels, "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine," was published in 1992 and spanned a 40-year period dealing with prejudice in the United States. The book earned her an NAACP Image Award for literature.

She followed the book with "Brothers and Sisters," which focused on race relations in the corporate world after the 1992 Los Angeles riot.

Among her other novels were "Singing in the Comeback Choir," "What You Owe Me" and "72 Hour Hold," the latter dealing with a mother coping with her daughter's bipolar disorder.

She also wrote children's books, including "Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry" in 2003, which won the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Outstanding Literature Award. Another children's book, "I'm So Hungry," will be released next year.

Campbell, whose full name was Elizabeth Bebe Moore Campbell Gordon, was born in February 1950 in Philadelphia. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971.

She wrote for various publications, including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Essence and Ebony.

Moore Campbell is survived by her husband; a son, Ellis Gordon III; a daughter, Maia Campbell; her mother, Doris Moore; and two grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

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