Esteemed author Ernest Gaines and renowned artist Donald Sultan will deliver the UNC Asheville Commencement address on Saturday, May 12. The ceremony begins at 9 a.m. on the Ramsey Library Terrace. In case of rain, Commencement will begin at 10 a.m. at the Asheville Civic Center. Some 590 students are candidates for bachelor's and master's of liberal arts degrees. During the ceremony, Chancellor Anne Ponder will also confer honorary doctoral degrees on Gaines and Sultan. Tickets are not required.

Ernest Gaines

Gaines, a professor of English and writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is acclaimed for his novels and short stories, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated "A Lesson Before Dying" and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," which was made into a popular television movie.

Gaines was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his 1997 novel, "A Lesson Before Dying," which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, Southern Book Award, Langston Hughes Award, Louisiana Literary Award and Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award. Gaines is also a MacArthur Fellow, 1993 Louisiana Humanist of the Year and 2000 Louisiana Writer of the Year. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received a National Humanities Medal.

A native of Louisiana, Gaines was among the fifth generation of his family born on the River Lake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, La., an influence and common setting for his fiction. The eldest of 12 children, he was raised by an aunt in slave quarters on the plantation. His early schooling in the 1930s consisted of six years in the quarters’ one-room church and three years at St. Augustine, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads. When he was 15, Gaines joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, Calif., because there was no high school available to him as an African American in rural Louisiana.

Gaines published his first short story, "The Turtles," in a college magazine at San Francisco State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in literature in 1957. After service in the Army, he won a writing fellowship to Stanford University. Gaines’ books include "A Gathering of Old Men" (1984), "In My Father’s House" (1978), "A Long Day in November" (1971), "Bloodline" (1968), "Of Love and Dust" (1967) and "Catherine Carmier" (1964). Since 1984, he has divided his time between San Francisco and Lafayette.

Donald Sultan

Sultan, a successful New York artist, is a native of Asheville and graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago, Sultan moved to New York in 1975 to begin his career.

Sultan quickly established himself as a prominent painter, printmaker and sculptor. He has exhibited his extensive body of work in some of the most prestigious galleries and museums around the world. His works are included in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Sultan’s art is on display in the galleries of his alma maters and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Australian National Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, among others.

Sultan is best known for his bold, large-scale treatments of still-life subjects, in which he depicts natural objects using industrial materials and methods. He describes his works as abstract—“heavy structure, holding fragile meaning”— giving the still-life tradition a fresh approach.

In recent years, Sultan has collaborated with playwright David Mamet on the book, "Bar Mitzvah." In addition, "Visual Poetics: the Art of Donald Sultan" includes several specially commissioned poems by beat veteran Robert Creeley. The voluminous and varied work of Donald Sultan—which demonstrates his ability to successfully merge the best of the artistic tradition with a fresh, modern approach that is unique—embodies the creative energy that has placed him at the forefront of contemporary art.

For more information about Commencement, call UNC Asheville's Office of the Provost at 828/251-6474 or click on www.unca.edu/news/commencement07.html.