Summary: | Author Ernest J. Gaines was born on January 15, 1933, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. He attended the St. Augustine Catholic School, and graduated from Vallejo Junior College in Vallejo, California. Gaines earned his B.A. degree in language arts from San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California in 1957. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955, Gaines published his first short story, "The Turtles," in 1956. Gaines received a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship in 1958 at Stanford University. He published his first full novel, Catherine Carmier in 1964. Gaines became the writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1981, and remained there until his retirement in 2004. After his retirement, he focused on repairing and restoring his old plantation home in Louisiana. Gaines was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, and several of his stories were successfully adapted for television.
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