2000 Louisiana Writer Award Recipient

Ernest J. Gaines

Personal Information
Awards
Career
Writings
Media Adaptations
Source Citation

• Recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts award, 1967
• Recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, 1993, for A Lesson before Dying
• Recipient of the Emmy Award for Best Television Movie, 1999, for adaptation of A Lesson before Dying

Personal Information

Family: Born January 15, 1933, in Oscar, LA; son of Manuel (a laborer) and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines; married Dianne Saulney (an attorney), 1993.
Education: Attended Vallejo Junior College; San Francisco State College (now University), B.A., 1957; graduate study at Stanford University, 1958-59.
Hobbies and other interests: Listening to music ("Bach to Coltrane"), watching television, reading, spending time in the gym.
Addresses: Office: 128 Buena Vista Blvd., Lafayette, LA, 70503-2059; and Department of English, University of Southwestern Louisiana, P.O. Box 44691, Lafayette, LA 70504-0001. Agent: JCA Literary Agency, Inc., 242 West 27th St., New York, NY 10001.

Awards

Wallace Stegner fellow, Stanford University, 1957; Joseph Henry Jackson Award, San Francisco Foundation, 1959, for "Comeback" (short story); National Endowment for the Arts award, 1967; Rockefeller grant, 1970; Guggenheim fellow, 1971; Black Academy of Arts and Letters award, 1972; fiction gold medal, Commonwealth Club of California, 1972, for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and 1984, for A Gathering of Old Men; Louisiana Library Association award, 1972; honorary doctorate of letters from Denison University, 1980, Brown University, 1985, Bard College, 1985, Whittier College, 1986, and Louisiana State University, 1987; award for excellence of achievement in literature, San Francisco Arts Commission, 1983; American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters literary award, 1987; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1993; National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, 1993, for A Lesson before Dying; made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (France), 1996; inducted into Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, Chicago State University, 1998; Emmy Award for Best Television Movie, 1999, for adaptation of A Lesson before Dying; National Humanities Medal, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2000.

Career

Novelist. Denison University, Granville, OH, writer-in-residence, 1971; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, writer-in-residence, 1981; University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, professor of English and writer-in-residence, beginning 1983. Whittier College, visiting professor, 1983, writer-in-residence, 1986. Military service: U.S. Army, 1953-55.

Writings by the Author

Fiction

• Catherine Carmier (novel), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1964.

• Of Love and Dust (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 1967.

• Bloodline (short stories; also see below), Dial (New York, NY), 1968, reprinted, Vintage Contemporaries (New York, NY), 1997.

• A Long Day in November (originally published in Bloodline), Dial (New York, NY), 1971.

• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 1971.

• In My Father's House (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1978.

• A Gathering of Old Men (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1983.

• A Lesson before Dying (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Other
Conversations with Ernest Gaines, edited by John Lowe, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1995.

Gaines's works have been translated into other languages, including German and French.

Media Adaptations

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, adapted from Gaines's novel, aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS-TV), 1974, and won nine Emmy Awards. "The Sky Is Gray," a short story originally published in Bloodline, was adapted for public television in 1980. A Gathering of Old Men, adapted from Gaines's novel, aired on CBS-TV, 1987. In My Father's House was adapted for audiocassette. A Lesson before Dying was filmed for Home Box Office, 1999, and was adapted for the stage by Romulus Linney, 2001.

Source Citation

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.
 http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC