Date of Birth: June 18, 1937
Current Residence: Woodstock, NY
Education: Attended Peace Junior College; University of North Carolina, B.A., 1959; University of Iowa, M.A., 1968; Ph.D. in English, 1971.
Profession: Lecturer in English and creative writing at Vassar, Columbia University, and other colleges and universities.

I am haunted at this moment by what I may write next. The good thing about becoming older is that you gain time from that much more experience and can see where the real stories are.
-Gail Godwin, Becoming a Writer, from The Writer on Her Work, Norton, 1980

So many landscapes impose themselves upon the one I look out on as I write this. So many people present themselves before my inner eye, turning themselves this way and that, reminding me of their myriad aspects. I'm a novelist and a teller of tales, in a room alone, looking our on rain-washed grass, garden, trees, yet seeing as well a French chateau, a path in white rock in New Mexico, a dormitory room, a marriage bed. I'm watching a roomful of personalities parading their traits before me, giving me a fashion show, enticing me to buy. 'I'm unique,' says one. 'So am I,' says another. ', too,' says another. 'Me, me!' cries a fourth. And all of them are right. Each of them is unique. And the more I write fiction, the more I want all of them. The more I understand: I am in all of them, all of then live in me.
-Gail Godwin, Becoming a Writer, from The Writer on Her Work, Norton, 1980

Godwin's prose is elegant, full of nuance and feeling, and sparkling with ironic humor.
-Lore Dickstein, New York Times Book Review, September 30, 1974