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. Four of his works were made into television movies.
A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines' eighth novel, published in 1993. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel is based on the true story of Willie Francis, a young Black American man best known for surviving a failed electrocution in the state of Louisiana in 1946.
The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ancestral publications of other names date back to January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of The Times-Picayune by the New Orleans edition of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author.
The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based in Baton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state. Separate editions for New Orleans, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, and for Acadiana, The Acadiana Advocate, are published. It also publishes gambit, about New Orleans food, culture, events, and news, and weekly entertainment magazines: Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and Beaucoup in New Orleans.
Baton Rouge Area Foundation is a community foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in Louisiana's capital region, and is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit organization. Since inception, the Foundation has granted over $650 million.
Willow School, formerly Lusher Charter School, is a K-12 charter school in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana, in the university area. Willow is chartered by Advocates for Arts Based Education (AABE), which acts as the board for the entire school. Willow School has three uptown campuses; the lower school program is housed at the Dr. Everett J. Williams, Jr. Campus, the middle school is at the Ellis L. Marsalis, Jr. Campus, and the high school is at the Elijah Brimmer, Jr. Campus on Freret Street. A temporary campus was housed at the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Avenue.
Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to three novels, he has written for Rolling Stone on the war in Darfur, and for Jane Magazine on the conflict in northern Uganda. His writing has also appeared in Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He is the Program Director of Written Arts at Bard College. In 2007 the National Book Foundation named him a "5 under 35" honoree. Since his first book was published in 2007, he has received numerous literary awards, and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.
Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.
David Armand is an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He has published four novels, The Pugilist's Wife, Harlow, The Gorge, and The Lord's Acre. He has also published three collections of poems, The Deep Woods, Debt, and The Evangelist as well as a memoir titled My Mother's House. From 2017-2019 he served as Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he is currently assistant professor of creative writing. His latest book, a collection of essays called Mirrors, was published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press. Armand is the 2022 recipient of the Louisiana Writer Award, presented annually by the Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana. He is the twenty-third recipient of the prestigious award presented to recognize outstanding contributions to Louisiana’s literary and intellectual life exemplified by a contemporary Louisiana writer’s body of work.
The Human Jukebox is the marching band representing Southern University and A&M College located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Stephanie Powell Watts is an American author. She won a Whiting Award in 2013 and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2012 for her book We are Taking Only what We Need, a collection of 11 stories that chronicles the lives of African-Americans in North Carolina. Her short fiction has been included in two volumes of the Best New Stories from the South anthology and honored with a Pushcart Prize.
Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
David Bernard is a former American television meteorologist who worked for WVUE-TV in New Orleans, Louisiana. He previously worked for CBS News and television stations in Miami, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Bryan Washington is an American writer from Houston. He published his debut short story collection, Lot, in 2019 and a novel, Memorial, in 2020.
Jamel Brinkley is an American writer. His debut story collection, A Lucky Man (2018), was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award, The Story Prize, the John Leonard Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He currently teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Randal Gaines is an American politician from the state of Louisiana. He serves in the Louisiana House of Representatives and is a member of the Democratic Party.
The Sweetness of Water is the debut novel by American novelist Nathan Harris. It was published by Little, Brown and Company on June 15, 2021. It won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.
Alexander Glustrom is an American film director and cinematographer. He has directed award winning films and shot projects for HBO, CNN, New York Times, A&E, Vice, Great Big Story, and Democracy Now. He currently works as a cinematographer on commercials, films and tv shows.
Bryan Stephen Berteaux Sr. was an African American news photographer. He worked as a combat photographer for the United States Army and later as a photographer for the Times-Picayune.
