LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) – A retired UL Lafayette professor, now deceased, will be featured on a Jan. postage stamp.

Ernest J. Gaines will be depicted on the United States Postal Service stamp as the 46th feature of their Black Heritage series. The image of Gaines will feature him wearing his trademark beret.

Gaines was an acclaimed author, as well as, UL Lafayette’s writer-in-residence emeritus.

He taught creative writing at the University from 1983 until his retirement in 2010.

Gaines passed away in November 2018, at 86 years old. After his retirement, Gaines worked on creating the University’s Ernest J. Gaines Center. This is an international center for scholarship on Gaines and his fiction that is housed in Edith Garland Dupré Library.

Gaines’ most notable book was “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” This is a first-person narrative of a fictional 110-year-old woman born into slavery.

His other most notable book, “A Lesson Before Dying,” revolves around the story of an illiterate man wrongfully condemned to death.

After being published in 1993, it earned a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club.