Shirley Ann Grau is an award-winning American novelist and short story writer. Born in New Orleans, her work is set primarily in the Deep South, 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. Her 1964 saga, The Keepers of the House was awarded the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.