Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on the River Lake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, an influence and common setting for his fiction. He was the eldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was crippled and had to crawl to get around the house. Although born generations after the end of slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, in old slave quarters on the plantation.

Gaines' first six years of school took place in the plantation church. A visiting teacher would teach him and the other children for five to six months of each year, depending on when the children were not picking cotton in the fields. Gaines' then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads. Pointe Coupée Parish schooling for African-American children did not continue beyond the eighth grade during this time.

When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California to join his mother and stepfather, who had left Louisiana during World War II. His first novel was written at age 17, while babysitting his youngest brother. According to one account, he wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string, and sent it to a New York publisher, who rejected it. Gaines burned the manuscript, but later rewrote it to become his first published novel, Catherine Carmier.

In 1956, Gaines published his first short story, The Turtles, in a college magazine at San Francisco State University. He earned a degree in literature in 1957 from SFSU. After spending two years in the Army, he won a writing fellowship to Stanford University.

Since 1984, Gaines has spent the first half of every year in San Francisco and the second half in Lafayette, where he teaches a creative writing workshop every autumn at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

In 1996 Gaines spent a full semester as a visiting professor at the University of Rennes in France where he taught the first Creative Writing class ever offered in the French University system.

Ernest Gaines currently maintains a place on Louisiana Highway 1 in Oscar, Louisiana, where he and his wife built a home on part of the old plantation where he grew up.

Books

• Stories and Essays (2005)
• A Lesson Before Dying (1993) — National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction (1993); Oprah's Book Club (1997)
• A Gathering of Old Men (1983)
• In My Father's House (1978)
• A Long Day in November (1971)
• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971)
• Bloodline (1968)
• Of Love and Dust (1967)
• Catherine Carmier (1964)

Short stories

• My Grandpa and the Haint (1966)
• A Long Day in November (1964)
• The Sky Is Gray (1963)
• Just Like a Tree (1963)
• Mary Louis (1960)
• Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit (1957)
• The Turtles (1956)

Filmography

• A Lesson Before Dying, HBO (1999); winner, Emmy Award for Outstanding Made For Television Movie
• A Gathering of Old Men, CBS Television (1987)
• The Sky Is Gray, American Short Story Series, PBS (1980)
• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, CBS Television (1974)

An award sponsored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and established in 2007 to honor Gaines' legacy. Submissions of fiction from African-American writers are eligible. The selected recipient receives a US$10,000 award and a commemorative sculpture created by artist Robert Moreland.