Uncategorized | October 18, 2004

In August of 1998, Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais sat down with Ernest J. Gaines on the campus of the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette. The results of their conversation were published in The Missouri Review 22:1 (1999) and we’ve now added the interview to those available online. Among the topics of conversation: the teaching of creative writing, dialogue, point of view, Turgenev, Oprah, and the influence of French filmmakers of the 1950s on Gaines.

Gaines is the author of six novels, including Of Love and Dust, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Gathering of Old Men, and one collection of stories, Bloodline. His most recent novel, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993. He has received a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Gaines was born on a plantation near New Roads, Louisiana. He now divides his time between Lafayette, Louisiana, and San Francisco.