Book of the Week (Oct. 16, 2006)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: PS 3557 .O315 Z468 2006

The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963

by Gail Godwin; edited by Rob Neufeld

Gail Godwin was twenty-four years old and working as a waitress in the North Carolina mountains when she wrote: “I want to be everybody who is great; I want to create everything that has ever been created.” It is a declaration that only a wildly ambitious young writer would make in the privacy of her journal. In the heady days of her literary apprenticeship, Godwin kept a daily chronicle of her dreams and desires, her travels, love affairs, struggles, and breakthroughs. Now, at the urging of her friend Joyce Carol Oates, Godwin has distilled these early journals, which run from 1961 to 1963, to their brilliant and charming essence. . . An inspired and inspiring volume, The Making of a Writer opens a shining window into the life and craft of a great writer just coming into her own.

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award nominee and the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, Evenings at Five, and, most recently, Queen of the Underworld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant for both fiction and libretto writing. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. Rob Neufeld is a librarian and a book reviewer for the Asheville Citizen-Times. He directs the “Together We Read” program for Western North Carolina. Publisher Book Description