The University of Louisiana at Lafayette announced the death of critically acclaimed novelist and literary icon Ernest J. Gaines on Tuesday. The university wrote on their website that the 86-year-old legend died at his home in Oscar, Louisiana. 

Gaines was launched into prominence in the late 1960s for his intimate and spellbinding novels about Black women and men surviving in America. His 1971 novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman catapulted him into international prominence as one of the preeminent voices coming out of the Black South.

He was born in 1933 on the River Lake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, to sharecropper parents. As a child, he spent most of the year working with his parents on the plantation and a few months attending school.

Gaines was left in the care of his great-aunt Augusteen Jefferson following his father's departure and his mother's remarriage to a man in California. Jefferson served as a towering figure in his life and the inspiration behind Jane Pittman as well as dozens of other powerful Black women in his stories.

He was eventually able to move to California and live with his mother, where he fell in love with libraries and joined the Army. A fellowship with Stanford University and other odd jobs gave him a few writing opportunities, but it was only when he moved back to Louisiana in 1963 that he saw his writing reach new levels.

In an interview with The New York Times, Gaines explained that he needed to move back South to be able to fully capture the lives of his protagonists.

“Content is probably only 40% of it, no more than 50%, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “If a book doesn’t have form, then damn, it ain’t no novel. We can go down the block right now and find a guy on the next corner who’ll tell the biggest and truest story you can ever hear," Gaines said.

"Now, putting that story down on paper so that a million people can read and feel and hear it like you on that street corner, that’s going to take form. That’s writing,” Gaines added.

After struggling through his first novel, his second gained the attention of another American writing icon, James Baldwin, who referenced it in a scathing 1969 take-down of popular culture. Baldwin slammed Hollywood for ignoring Gaines' Of Love and Dust in favor of other films or books. 

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was eventually turned into a TV movie starring Cicely Tyson. The movie won nine Emmy awards, and two more movies were made of his novels. Since then, he has garnered dozens of awards, receiving the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2000 and the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013.

After a decorated literary career, Gaines taught creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette until he retired in 2010.

In his honor, the school created the Ernest J. Gaines Center, an international research center and archive dedicated to preserving the life and works of the author. In their statement on his death, the school said his legacy was "nothing short of brilliant and awe-inspiring."

"Though he touched countless people through his work, to know him was to love him. A towering man with a gentle voice, Dr. Gaines was an inspiration to generations and his death will be felt deeply by family, friends, and his University family," the school said in their statement.

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