Gail Godwin

University of North Carolina at Asheville D. Hiden Ramsey Library Special Collections Gail Godwin (b. 1937) Southern Appalachian Writers Collection M2005.05.02-08

Title	Gail Godwin
Creator	Southern Highlands Research Center
Alt. Creator	D. H. Ramsey Library
Identifier	http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/southern_appalachian_writers/godwin_gail/godwin_gail.htm
Subject Keyword	Gail Godwin ; Southern Appalachian Writers ; Appalachia
Subject LCSH	Godwin, Gail, 1937 - American literature -- Appalachian Region, Southern -- History and criticism American literature -- Appalachian Mountains -- History and criticism Appalachians (People) in literature Appalachian Region, Southern -- Description and travel
Description	The collection contains letters of correspondence, ephemera, a photograph, book jackets, an audio recording, and anecdotal information on the writer. These materials were gathered as part of an exhibition of Southern Appalachian Writers held at UNCA in the early 1980's and sponsored by D. H. Ramsey Library and the Southern Highlands Research Center.
Publisher	D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804
Contributor	Annette Hatley
Date	2005-08-23
Type	Collection ; text ; photograph ; audio recording
Format	1 folder ; text ; image
Source	M2005.05.02-8
Language	English
Relation	The Heritage of Western North Carolina, D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville
Coverage	1900's - present ; North Carolina ;
Rights	Any display, publication, or public use must credit the D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville. Copyright retained by the creators of certain items in the collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. Some materials in collections are electronic rights only. Please ask for assistance from Special Collections staff.
Donor	240
Acquisition	2004-03-
Citation	Gail Godwin in Southern Appalachian Writers Collection, D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804
Processed by	Special Collections staff, 2005
Last update	2008-09-17
Statement on writing	"...It seemed to me I was always being hurt, I was always feeling hurt, or not loved enough. And I would write all these things down. I would write down in great detail, what he said, what I said, the surroundings, what other people were there, just almost like a story.... "My interest in writing is precipitated by a need to expand awareness of the possibilities of experience. "I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better. Rodin was right when he said that even an achieved work is never perfect; it is always susceptible to a modification that can make it better. But i believe that with enough practice and skill and good faith, you can learn to recognize when the work is achieved.... Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime. Perfection, however that ideal is measure may not grave the work but it should be sought during the process of the work."
Biography	Gail Godwin was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1937, but spent many of her formative years in Asheville, North Carolina. Her undergraduate degree was earned at UNC-Chapel Hill, followed by (after a short break) a Ph.D. at the University of Iowa, where she studied under Kurt Vonnegut. Since then, she has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and Columbia University. She has been thrice nominated for the National Book Award (for The Odd Woman, Violet Clay, and A Mother and Two Daughters). She now lives in Woodstock, New York.
Bibliography	*BOOKS BY*
1970	The Perfectionists. New York: Penguin Books, 1970.
1972	Glass People. New York: Knopf, 1972.
1974	The Odd Woman. New York: Knopf, 1974.
1976	Dream Children. New York: Knopf, 1976.
1978	Violet Clay. New York: Knopf, 1978.
1982	A Mother and Two Daughters. New York: Viking Press, 1982.
1983	Mr. Bedford and the Muses. New York: Viking Press, 1983.
1984	The Finishing School. New York: Viking Press, 1985.
1987	A Southern Family. New York: William Morrow, 1987.
1991	Father Melancholy's Daughter. New York: William Morrow, 1991.
1994	The Good Husband. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
1999	Evensong. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
2001	Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings. New York: William Morrow, 2001.
2003	Evenings at Five. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
2006	Queen of the Underworld. New York: Random House, 2006. The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963. Rob Neufeld, ed. New York: Random House, 2006.
	*STORIES AND NOVELLAS BY*
1949	"The Autobiography of a Tin Cup." First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors. Paul Mandelbaum, ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1993.
1951	"The Accomplice." First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors. Paul Mandelbaum, ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1993. "The Choice." First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors. Paul Mandelbaum, ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1993.
1955	"So Nice of You To Come." First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors. Paul Mandelbaum, ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1993.
1969	"St. George." Cosmopolitan,1969.
1971	"For Samuel Beckett: More." James Joyce Quarterly, 1971.
1983	"Over the Mountain." Antaeus, 1983.
1986	"Old Lovegood Girls." Iowa Review, 1986.
1999	"Possible Sins." Brightleaf, 1999.
2001	"Largesse." Tri-Quarterly, 2001.
	*ESSAYS AND ARTICLES BY*
1978	"Inner and Outer Landscapes." Antaeus, Spring, 1978.
1980	"Becoming a Writer." The Writer on Her Work. Janet Sternberg, ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980.
1985	"A Novelist Sings a Different Tune." New York Times Book Review, 15 December, 1985. "One Woman Leads to Another." [essay review of Anthology of Literature by Women, edited by Sandra Susan Gubar]. New York Times Book Review, 28 April, 1985.
1986	"House Parties and Box Lunches: One Writer's Summer at Yaddo." New York Times Book Review, 10 August, 1986.
1988	"A Diarist on Diarists." Our Private Lives. Daniel Halpern, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. "Journals, 1982-1987." Our Private Lives. Daniel Halpern, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.
1989	"My Mother, the Writer: Master of a Thousand Disguises." New York Times Book Review, 11 June, 1989.
1995	"Rituals and Readiness: Getting Ready to Write." The Writing Life: A Collection of Essays and Interviews by National Book Award Authors. New York: Random House, 1995. "The Girl in the Basement." Who's Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I, with Self Portraits. Daniel Halpern, ed. New York: Ecco Press, 1995.
1998	"Uncle Orphy." Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers. Joyce Dyer, ed. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.
1999	"The Writing Life." The Washington Post Book World, 14 February, 1999. "Waltzing with the Black Crayon [studying with Kurt Vonnegut at Iowa]." Yale Review, January 1999. Gail Godwin on a favorite writer [C.G. Jung]. For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most. Ronald B. Shwartz, ed. New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1999.
2000	"The Watcher at the Gate." September 17, 2008. <http://www.csun.edu/~hceng006/watcher.html> "Farewell to a Mentor [the Rev. Gale D. Webbe, 1909-2000]." The Living Church, 14 May, 2000. "Mother & Daughter Ghosts, a Memoir." The Angle Street Review, v. 2.1, 2000.
2006	"The Female Apprentice Novel: Is This Young Woman Worth Writing About or Should She Get Over Herself?" September 15, 2008. <http://www.gailgodwin.com/female_apprentice.htm>.
	*INTERVIEWS WITH*
1983	"Gail Godwin Talks of Her Fiction and Her Muses." Mitgang, Herbert. The New York Times, 4 October, 1983.
1987	"Composer and Librettist." Continuo: a Life in Music. Starer, Robert. New York: Random House, 1987.
1990	"Gail Godwin." Inter/View: Talks with America's Writing Women. Henderson, Katherine Usher. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1990.
1991	"Gail Godwin's Melancholy Muse." Streitfeld, David. The Washington Post, 7 March 1991.
1993	"A Dialogue with Gail Godwin." Xie, Lihong. The Mississippi Quarterly, Spring 1993. "Mothering Our 'Dream Children' from Gail Godwin." Kuhlman, Deborah. Short Story, v. 1.1 (1993).
1994	"Gail Godwin Talks about Southern Storytelling." Donlon, Joyce Hazelwood. The Southern Quarterly, Spring 1994. "Gail Godwin [three interviews: 1987, 1991, 1994]." Powell, Dannye Romine. Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair Publisher, 1994. "Gail Godwin." Conversations on Writing Fiction: Interviews with 13 Distinguished Teachers of Fiction Writing in America. Neubauer, Alexander. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.
1999	"Portrait of Gail Godwin: America's Cartographer of the Heart." The Washington Post Book World, 14 February, 1999. "Gail Godwin: A Leap of Faith in a New Novel." Baker, John F. Publisher's Weekly, 15 February, 1999. Interview about Evensong with Terri Gross on "Fresh Air": National Public Radio, 1 March, 1999. "The Situation on American Writing 1999." American Literary History, Summer, 1999.
2001	"Tea and Conversation." Whitcomb, Claire. Victoria, February 2001.
2003	"A Novel Approach." Havas, Valerie. Hudson Valley Magazine, September 2003.
2004	"One True Sentence Before Lunch." Uchmanowicz, Pauline. Chronogram, April 2004. September 17, 2008. <http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2004/04/book_shelf/index.html>
2006	"A Novelist and Her Journals." Abbe, Elfrieda. The Writer Magazine, May 2006. September 17, 2008. <http://www.gailgodwin.com/pdfs/WRT-A0506.pdf>