Author

       Frannie Flagg is the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. She was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama and that's where she grew up.  Her parents passed away when she was young. She was given the name of Patricia Neal but created the stage name Frannie Flagg because there was already an oscar winning actress with the same name. She started acting as a child. Her acting career took her to college at the University of Alabama. She did not graduate but continued with her studies in theater in Pittsburg. She stared in many television shows, movies, and broadway shows such as The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The New-Original Wonder Woman and the Love Boat.  She played Nurse Wilkins in the movie version of the show Grease. 
     She wrote many scrpits for plays and shows but never really had a passion for writting until she did a writting workshop led by Eudora Welty.  She struggled because she was Dyslexic but ended up winning a contest and decided to publish her book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. She has written a few other books and continues to write about what she knows best.
Frannie Flagg lives with her girlfriend in New York city. She is a funny, good humored woman who belives strongly in equl rights.
     Knowing a bit about the writer, I can see where she got her ideas for her characters. Growing up in Alabama, she knows about life in small towns and about society in those times. Flags parents died when she was young similar to Niny's character. Niny grows up with another family because her parents had passed away. Flag is also a lesbian, just like Idgie and Ruth. I think that Idgie was inspired by Flagg herself and her the life she led. She writes about what she knows, such as southern life in Alabama where she grew up and what she lived through. A big beliver in civil rights, she has written a story about seperation and segregation of blacks and whites. She trys to get her point across in the book that racism is not good. Idgie is just like her and Idgie would never turn away someone of color from her cafe.