Grau, Shirley Ann (1929-2020), was an American novelist and short-story writer known for her fiction set in the southern United States. Grau was born in New Orleans and graduated from Tulane University in the city in 1950. Her writing typically dealt with the local color of Louisiana as well as racial conflicts between Black and white people.
Grau first gained recognition for her short-story collection The Black Prince (1955) and her novel about Cajun fishermen, The Hard Blue Sky (1958). She won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Keepers of the House (1964), a novel that explores interracial marriage and politics through three generations of a Southern family. Her other novels include The House on Coliseum Street (1961), The Condor Passes (1971), Evidence of Love (1977), and Roadwalkers (1994). Her later short stories were published in The Wind Shifting West (1973), Nine Women (1985), and Selected Stories (2003). Grau died on Aug. 10, 2020.
