Shirley Ann Grau (born July 8, 1929) Born in New Orleans,[1] her work is set primarily in the Deep South,[1] and explores issues of race and gender. She spent much of her childhood in rural Alabama with her mother. She graduated in 1950 from Newcomb College of Tulane University.[2] Her 1964 saga The Keepers of the House was awarded the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[3] (For a brief article on Shirley Ann Grau, her biography, her work, and her world view, see "The World According To Grau," a 1998 feature story by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor in Metro Newspaper, San Jose, CA http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/02.26.98/cover/lit-grau-9808.html)