
Fannie Flagg was born Patricia Neal in Birmingham, Jefferson County, on September 21, 1944, to William H. and Marion Leona LeGore Neal; she was an only child. The family lived in Irondale, where her father was a businessman and movie theater projectionist. As a child, Flagg struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, which caused her to lack self-confidence as a writer for many years. She began acting at 14 with a Birmingham theater troupe for children and young adults, and she wrote skits in which she played the lead roles, most notably a play entitled The Whoopee Girls. At 17, when she registered with Actor's Equity (a union for actors who work in live theater), she changed her name to Frances Carlton Flagg, which she shortened to Fannie Flagg, to avoid being confused with Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal.


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 and "Best Adapted Screenplay" from the Writer's Guild of America in 1992.

Flagg won the 2001 Alabama State Council on the Arts Distinguished Artist Award, and in 2012, she won the Harper Lee Award, which honors Alabama's distinguished writer of the year. Flagg has homes in Fairhope, Baldwin County, and Santa Barbara, California.
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 (2010)
The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion (2013)
The Whole Town's Talking (2016)
The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop (2020)
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.