Title: Conversations with Ernest Gaines
First published: 1995
Description: The winner in 1994 of the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines, whose career spans more than thirty-five years, continues to receive increasing critical and popular attention. In the community of southern authors he finds his natural place. "Southern writers," he says, "have much more in common than differences. They have in common a certain point of view as well.".

Through television productions of his fiction - The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and "The Sky is Gray" - Gaines has become widely known and appreciated. Although focused principally upon African-American life in the Deep South, his writing bears strong influence of European authors.

In these interviews, two of which have never before been printed, Ernest Gaines casts a retrospective light upon his long and productive career. Drawn from journals, magazines, and newspapers, the interviews are occasions for Gaines to recall his childhood, his "bohemian" days in San Francisco, his long effort to get published, and recent events in his life - including his marriage and his receiving a MacArthur Prize.
Subjects: African Americans in literature, American Novelists, Novelists, American, Interviews, Fiction, Authorship, In literature, Literature, Noirs americains, Interview, Entretiens, Dans la litterature, Noirs américains, Dans la littérature, Authors, biography, Gaines, ernest j., 1933-2019, Louisiana, in literature, Fiction, authorship, Intellectual life
Places: Louisiana
People: Ernest J. Gaines (1933-)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3557.A355 Z464 1995