[6] Her sixth novel, sex.lies.murder.fame[7] was optioned for film by Carolyn Folks for Entertainment Studios[8] with Files adapting the screenplay.

Her love of Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Meriwether, Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe, Claude Brown, Richard Wright, Gustav Flaubert, and Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes would inform and influence much of her work.

Scenes from a Sistah debuted[17] a year later in April 1997 and was an instant hit,[18][19] quickly selling out of its first printing and landing on several bestseller lists.

[22] SUNY Empire State College offers an eight-week course, "Exploring The Disciplines: Literature (EDU-232072),"[23] centered around the examination of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Lolita Files' novel, Child of God.

Per the course description: "Both texts include a similar story-line: a murder, an incestuous relationship, an uneasy resolution at the end.

By exploring these texts written over 300 years apart, students will learn about the types of themes, questions, comparisons and insights that literature has to offer.

[24] In the series, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump leads an in-depth investigation into the unsolved murder of hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur.

[25] Results came back revealing a direct link of Files' maternal ancestry[26] to the Brame and Balanta people of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.