Fannie Flagg (1944- ) is an actress, comedian, producer, and bestselling author whose fiction focuses on small-town life (usually set in Alabama), with strong female characters who question racial and gender inequities. Her best-known work, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Café, was made into a critically well-received film.


In 1978, Flagg won first place in fiction for a short story that she had written at the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference. The work became the basis for the novel Coming Attractions. In 1980, after the deaths of her parents, she decided to pursue writing full-time. Flagg's first novel, Coming Attractions: A Wonderful Novel, was published in 1981. The book was reissued as Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man in 1992. A coming-of-age novel set around 1952, it features an eleven-year-old protagonist, Daisy Fay Harper, who uses diary entries to tell the story of her alcoholic father's get-rich-quick schemes and her ladylike and well-mannered mother. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 10 weeks.
Her best-known and most successful novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, was published in 1987, remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks. It was praised by both Harper Lee and Eudora Welty. The novel is told in both past and present tense by the characters Ninnie Threadgoode (past) and Evelyn Crouch (present) and focuses on the town of Whistle Stop, Alabama, circa the 1920s and 1930s. It is about the unlikely bonds forged between women who seemingly have nothing in common except restlessness. Flagg, along with Jon Avnet, adapted the novel for a 1991 film of the same name. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award and won the University of Southern California (USC) Scripter Award from the Friends of USC Libraries in 1992. The award is given annually to a screenplay best representing an artistic expression of preserving the wisdom of the past.

Flagg won the 2001 Alabama State Council on the Arts Distinguished Artist Award. Flagg, who has homes in Fairhope, Baldwin County, and Santa Barbara, California, has several works in progress, including developing Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe as a Broadway play.
Works by Fannie Flagg
Rally 'Round the Flagg (sound recording, 1967)
Works by Fannie Flagg
Rally 'Round the Flagg (sound recording, 1967)
My Husband Doesn't Know I'm Making This Phone Call (sound recording, 1971)
Coming Attractions: A Wonderful Novel (1981) (Reprinted as Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, 1992)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe (1987)
Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle-Stop Café Cookbook (1993)
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl? (1998)
Standing in the Rainbow (2002)
A Redbird Christmas (2004)
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven (2006)
I Still Dream About You (2011)
Additional Resources
Flagg, Fannie. "The Truth the Heart Knows." In The Remembered Gate: Memoirs of Alabama Authors, edited by Jay Lamar and Jeanie Thompson, pp. 35-38. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.
Additional Resources
Flagg, Fannie. "The Truth the Heart Knows." In The Remembered Gate: Memoirs of Alabama Authors, edited by Jay Lamar and Jeanie Thompson, pp. 35-38. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.