[This entry was updated by Keith E. Byerman (Indiana State University) from his entry in DLB 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series.]

Ernest J. Gaines has since the publication of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1971 established himself as one of the most prominent of contemporary African American writers. The CBS television presentation of Gaines's most famous novel on 31 January 1974 helped bring to public awareness a history of black Americans that had been too long ignored. Two other works have also been made into televised dramas: “The Sky is Gray,” a story from the Bloodline collection (1968) that was produced for public television in 1980, and A Gathering of Old Men, which appeared on CBS (10 May 1987). Gaines has received many awards, most recently a MacArthur Foundation award in recognition of his achievements (1993) and the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Lesson before Dying (1993). Like...