| Ernest J. Gaines | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ernest James Gaines January 15, 1933 Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, USA |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | United States |
| Notable work(s) | A Lesson Before Dying The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman A Gathering of Old Men |
| Notable award(s) | American Academy of
Arts and Letters National Humanities Medal Ordre des Arts et des Lettres |
Ernest James Gaines (born 15 January 1933) is an American author. His works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese. Four of his works have been produced into television movies.[1]
His 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the National Humanities Medal, and inducted into the French Order of Arts and Letters as a Chevalier.
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Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on the River Lake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, an influence and common setting for his fiction. He was the eldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was crippled and had to crawl to get around the house. Although born generations after the end of slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, in old slave quarters on the plantation.
Gaines' first six years of school took place in the plantation church. A visiting teacher would teach him and the other children for five to six months of each year, depending on when the children were not picking cotton in the fields. Gaines' then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads. Pointe Coupée Parish schooling for African-American children did not continue beyond the eighth grade during this time.
When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California to join his mother and stepfather, who had left Louisiana during World War II. His first novel was written at age 17, while babysitting his youngest brother. According to one account, he wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string, and sent it to a New York publisher, who rejected it. Gaines burned the manuscript, but later rewrote it to become his first published novel, Catherine Carmier.
In 1956, Gaines published his first short story, The Turtles, in a college magazine at San Francisco State University. He earned a degree in literature in 1957 from SFSU. After spending two years in the Army, he won a writing fellowship to Stanford University.
Since 1984, Gaines has spent the first half of every year in San Francisco and the second half in Lafayette, where he teaches a creative writing workshop every autumn at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
In 1996 Gaines spent a full semester as a visiting professor at the University of Rennes in France where he taught the first Creative Writing class ever offered in the French University system.[2]
Ernest Gaines currently maintains a residence on Louisiana Highway 1 in Oscar, Louisiana, where he and his wife built a home on part of the old plantation where he grew up. [3]
Books
Short stories
Filmography
An award sponsored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and established in 2007 to honor Gaines' legacy. Submissions of fiction from African-American writers are eligible. The selected recipient receives a US$10,000 award and a commemorative sculpture created by artist Robert Moreland.[5]
  | Interview with Gaines: "Going Home: the transcript" - Going Home: the transcript | R. Reese Fuller |
| | Article about Gaines: "Going Home" - Going Home | R. Reese Fuller |
| | The Riverside Reader - Riverside Reader - We've Got The Westside Covered |
| | Interview with Gaines - A Lesson for Living, Sojourners Magazine/September-October 2002 |
| | Louisiana Writer Award - Center for the Book |
| | Random House bio - Vintage / Anchor « Knopf Doubleday - Vintage / Anchor |
| | Quotes source - Ernest Gaines Quotes |
| | The African American Registry - African American Registry -- Your Source for African American History |
| | Ernest J. Gaines Award - Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence |
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