Ernest James Gaines was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese.
11 Facts About Ernest Gaines
2.
Ernest Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.
3.
Ernest Gaines was the eldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was disabled and had to crawl to get around the house.
4.
When he was 15 years old, Ernest Gaines moved to Vallejo, California, to join his mother and stepfather, who had left Louisiana during World War II.
5.
Ernest Gaines wrote his first novel at 17 while he was babysitting his youngest brother Michael.
6.
Ernest Gaines burned the manuscript, but later rewrote it to become his first published novel, Catherine Carmier.
7.
In 1956, Ernest Gaines published his first short story, The Turtles, in a college magazine at San Francisco State University.
8.
From 1981 until retiring in 2004, Ernest Gaines was a Writer-in-Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
9.
In 1996, Ernest 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.
10.
Ernest Gaines had the building where he attended church and school moved to his property.
11.
Ernest Gaines died from natural causes at his home on November 5,2019.