HIGHWAY IN POINTE COUPEE PARISH NAMED FOR WRITER ERNEST J. GAINES

LAFAYETTE, La., May 21 -- The University of Louisiana at Lafayette issued the following news release:

An almost 40-mile section of Louisiana Highway 1 in Pointe Coupee Parish has been designated the Ernest J. Gaines Memorial Highway.



The memorial highway pays tribute to Gaines, the internationally acclaimed writer and University of Louisiana at Lafayette writer-in-residence emeritus, and recognizes his substantial influence on American literature.

Gaines, who died in 2019 at age 86, taught creative writing at the University from 1983 until 2010. Following his retirement, he helped to establish the University's Ernest J. Gaines Center, an international center for scholarship on Gaines and his fiction that is housed in Edith Garland Dupr...