Gaines will speak at a colloquium at 2:30 p.m. in 210 Candler Library, and will read from his work at 7 p.m. in Winship Ballroom, Dobbs Center. Both events are free and open to the public.
Gaines' fiction is deeply rooted in the black culture and storytelling traditions of his native, rural Louisiana. He published his first novel, Catherine Carmier in 1964, which was based on a story Gaines had written in his mid-teens. The story explores the tensions that traditionally have existed between fair-skinned and dark-skinned blacks in Louisiana. With the popularity of his second novel, Of Love and Dust (1967), which yielded numerous speaking engagements as well as the support of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the writer was able to quit his part-time jobs and pursue his writing career on a full-time basis.
Also the author of In My Father's House (1978), A Gathering of Old Men (1983), and A Lesson Before Dying (1993), Gaines has received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Also the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genuis grant" in 1993, Gaines has been credited with creating fiction with "rare historical resonance."
Gaines' best known novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, was made into a television movie in 1974 and subsequently won nine Emmy awards.
Gaines received his B.A. in English from the San Francisco State College (now University of California, San Francisco). He currently serves as professor of creative writing at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
For more information on Gaines' appearance, call the Creative Writing Program at 727-4683.