About Ernest Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines, born January 15, 1933, is an acclaimed American

author whose novels and short stories have been awarded numerous

 honors and have been taught in countless classrooms. His best-

known fiction includes his 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, The

 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Gathering of Old Men.

A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle

 Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for

 Fiction. A novel that references much of his own personal history,

 it was also a pick of Oprah’s Book Club in 1997.

In 2004 Gaines was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is a MacArthur Foundation fellow, was inducted into the

 American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded the

 National Humanities Medal.