Godwin - Publishing: a Writers Memoir

Moses Cardona, Nancy Miller, and Evie Preston contributed immensely to Publishing: A Writers Memoir. I am so glad to have them in my corner.

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of fourteen critically acclaimed novels, including Flora , Queen of the Underworld , The Good Husband , A Mother and Two Daughters , Father Melancholys Daughter , and Evensong ; two story collections, Dream Children and Mr. Bedford and the Muses ; and a nonfiction work, Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings . She is the author of The Making of a Writer , volumes one and two, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, the Janet Heidinger Kafka prize, the Thomas Wolfe Award, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She lives in Woodstock, New York. Visit her website at www.gailgodwin.com.

Frances Halsband is a founding partner of Kliment Halsband Architects in New York City. The firm does master planning and design for schools and universities. They have received the Medal of Honor and the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects. Frances has served as a commissioner of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and as dean of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute. She did the drawings for Gail Godwins Evenings at Five . Her website is www.kliment-halsband.com.

NOVELS

Flora

Unfinished Desires

Queen of the Underworld

Evenings at Five

Evensong

The Good Husband

Father Melancholys Daughter

A Southern Family

The Finishing School

A Mother and Two Daughters

Violet Clay

The Odd Woman

Glass People

The Perfectionists

STORY COLLECTIONS

Mr. Bedford and the Muses

Dream Children

NON-FICTION

The Making of a Writer: Journals, vols. 1 and 2

Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings

1902

Mrs. Craddock by the doctor Somerset Maugham, age twenty-eight, published in England by Heinemann after author agrees to remove shocking passages.

1912

Kathleen Krahenbuhl born in Selma, Alabama.

1918

Proff Frederick H. Koch arrives at UNC, Chapel Hill, to teach playwriting; Thomas Wolfe is in his class.

1929

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, age twenty-nine, of Asheville, N.C., published by Scribner.

1934

Kathleen Krahenbuhl writes and performs in her Carolina Playmakers plays at Chapel Hill.

1937

Gail Godwin born in Bessemer, Alabama.

19421945

Kathleen Godwin works as general assignment reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times and publishes under pen names in love story pulps.

1954

Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man (The Early Years) by Thomas Mann, age seventy-nine, published by Knopf.

1957

Gail waits tables during summer at Mayview Manor, Blowing Rock, N.C.

19571959

Gail earns B.A. in journalism at UNC, Chapel Hill.

19591961

Gail works as general assignment reporter for the Miami Herald.

1961

Adrift in Soho , by Colin Wilson, age thirty, published by Gollancz.

19621966

Gail works for United States Travel Service in London.

19671971

Gail at University of Iowa; attends Iowa Writers Workshop, earns M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature.

1968

John Hawkins sells The Perfectionists to David Segal at Harper & Row.

1970

The Perfectionists published when Gail is thirty-three. David Segal moves to Knopf as a senior editor, dies. Robert Gottlieb becomes Gails editor.

1972

Gail on postdoctoral fellowship at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Knopf publishes Glass People. Gail begins The Odd Woman. Gail has summer residence at Yaddo artists colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; meets composer Robert Starer.

1973

Gail and Robert move to Stone Ridge, N.Y.

1974

Knopf publishes The Odd Woman (finalist for National Book Award).

1976

Knopf publishes Dream Children (stories); Gail and Robert move to Woodstock, N.Y.

1978

Knopf publishes Violet Clay (1979 finalist for National Book Award).

1982

A Mother and Two Daughters published by Viking (finalist for National Book Award).

1983

Viking publishes Mr. Bedford and the Muses (a novella and stories).

1985

Viking publishes The Finishing School.

1987

Morrow publishes A Southern Family (wins Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award).

1989

Kathleen Cole dies in automobile crash.

1991

Morrow publishes Father Melancholys Daughter.

1994

Random HouseBallantine publishes The Good Husband.

1999

Random HouseBallantine publishes Evensong.

2001

Morrow publishes Heart ; Robert dies.

2003

Random HouseBallantine publishes Evenings at Five.

2006

Random House publishes Queen of the Underworld and The Making of a Writer, Volume One , edited by Rob Neufeld.

2009

Random House publishes Unfinished Desires.

2011

Random House publishes The Making of a Writer, Volume Two . John Hawkins dies.

2013

Bloomsbury USA and Bloomsbury UK publish Flora.

Contents

A CHANGE OF HEART AND STYLE

There is a place in me I havent gone yet.

Authors 2009 notes when starting Flora

Grandmothers storyline: This is what didnt happen. Its my cover up, and after Im dead you wont know what I had to cover up.

Floras storyline: This is what happened. Its all I know.

Authors 2010 notes while writing Flora

You think this story is going to be about Helen, said Alexandra Pringle, my English publisher at Bloomsbury UK, but when you reach the end you realize its about Flora, and you are devastated. She was describing the readers response, but she also was describing my experience of writing it.

I began the book thinking it was going to be all about Helen and how things turned out for Helen: the precocious and cunning child who became the accomplished and remorseful adult. But I also uncovered a new kind of character in Flora. Her story is over but I miss her and want her back.

I thought I knew her intimately, I thought I knew everything there was to know about her, reflects Helen as she looks back over the summer that her cousin Flora took care of her, but she has since become a profound study for me.... Styles have come and gone in storytelling, psychologizing, theologizing, but Flora keeps providing me with something as enigmatic as it is basic to life, as timeless as it is fresh.

Helen is ten and Flora, a first cousin of Helens late mother, is twenty-two, during their summer together. Helens grandmother Nonie, who has raised her, died in the spring, and Helens father is off doing secret war work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Flora was the first novel I kept to myself. During its three years of writing, I showed it to no one. At first my reasons for withholding it were practical ones. There was no longer someone living in the house to whom I could read chapters hot from the presses and have him first praise the successful things and then, in subsequent bearable increments, suggest where it fell short. (Listen, Ive been thinking: Margaret is eighteen years old. You have to give her a boyfriend.) My agent and first reader outside the house was slowly and painfully convalescing from a series of major surgeries. Also, I was not ready to make another contract: I was pretty sure I was going to seek a new publisher, and first wanted to get an idea of where the book was going.

But as the chapters accumulated and the characters interactions pointed more and more inevitably toward the conclusion, the intimacy between me and this book became too precious to risk. Constructing this lean tale about the underpinnings of the self was more important than any book contract or suggestions from others.