The above map shows the location where the author was born.
Author Background
Ernest James Gaines was born on the River Lake Plantation near Oscar, in Louisiana. His parents separated when he was eight. The main adult influence in his childhood was a great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, who was crippled from birth. Despite this, she crawled from kitchen to the family's garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for Gaines and his six brothers and sisters.
Since story-telling and oral tradition were a powerful part of African American culture in the rural South, Ernest Gaines absorbed the stories of his family and neighbors, acquiring a sense of history. From the age of nine, Ernest Gaines and the other children were sent to labor alongside their elders in the fields, harvesting vegetables and cotton. Pointe Coupee Parish offered no public high school to its black citizens. For three years, Gaines attended St. Augustine's School, a segregated Catholic school in New Roads, Louisiana. During World War II, his mother and stepfather left the South. At 15, Gaines joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California. His stepfather urged him to spend time in the public library.Finding no literature that directly portrayed the life of African Americans in the rural South, he began to write stories of his own, recreating the world of his childhood.
Gaines enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he published a number of short stories in the University. His stories won him admission to the selective graduate program in creative writing at Stanford University. Gaines settled in San Francisco after graduate school. His first novel, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1964, but sold poorly. In 1966, he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to continue his writing. The following year, his second novel, Of Love and Dust, appeared. A collection of five stories, Bloodline, was published in 1968. In 1971, Gaines was appointed Writer-in-Residence at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, published in 1971. The film won nine Emmy Awards and brought Gaines's work to the attention of a vast audience for the first time. In 1993, Gaines received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." The same year saw the publication of his most critically acclaimed novel to date, A Lesson Before Dying
Since 1983, Ernest Gaines has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. In addition to his other honors, Ernest Gaines has been awarded the National Humanities Medal of the United States, and is a Chevalier of France's Order of Arts and Letters. In 2007, the Baton Rouge Foundation established the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence to recognize new fiction by African American authors. Today, his permanent residence in Louisiana is a house that he and his wife, Dianne Saulney, built on land that was once part of River Lake Plantation, where he spent his childhood, and where his ancestors labored for generations.
Since story-telling and oral tradition were a powerful part of African American culture in the rural South, Ernest Gaines absorbed the stories of his family and neighbors, acquiring a sense of history. From the age of nine, Ernest Gaines and the other children were sent to labor alongside their elders in the fields, harvesting vegetables and cotton. Pointe Coupee Parish offered no public high school to its black citizens. For three years, Gaines attended St. Augustine's School, a segregated Catholic school in New Roads, Louisiana. During World War II, his mother and stepfather left the South. At 15, Gaines joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California. His stepfather urged him to spend time in the public library.Finding no literature that directly portrayed the life of African Americans in the rural South, he began to write stories of his own, recreating the world of his childhood.
Gaines enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he published a number of short stories in the University. His stories won him admission to the selective graduate program in creative writing at Stanford University. Gaines settled in San Francisco after graduate school. His first novel, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1964, but sold poorly. In 1966, he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to continue his writing. The following year, his second novel, Of Love and Dust, appeared. A collection of five stories, Bloodline, was published in 1968. In 1971, Gaines was appointed Writer-in-Residence at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, published in 1971. The film won nine Emmy Awards and brought Gaines's work to the attention of a vast audience for the first time. In 1993, Gaines received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." The same year saw the publication of his most critically acclaimed novel to date, A Lesson Before Dying
Since 1983, Ernest Gaines has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. In addition to his other honors, Ernest Gaines has been awarded the National Humanities Medal of the United States, and is a Chevalier of France's Order of Arts and Letters. In 2007, the Baton Rouge Foundation established the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence to recognize new fiction by African American authors. Today, his permanent residence in Louisiana is a house that he and his wife, Dianne Saulney, built on land that was once part of River Lake Plantation, where he spent his childhood, and where his ancestors labored for generations.