Well, it's officially spring, 2004, and I've had this web site for three years. And, yes, it still seems magical to me, this form of communication, but it's a magic I now feel familiar with, and that I rely on more and more. I can offer hospitality to anyone in virtual space who's curious enough to double click on my name.

So welcome to my domain. What you see here has been assembled for your interest, your information, and your pleasure. I'm not going to meet you at the door and drag you down to a dusty basement and make you sneeze your way through old scrapbooks and puff files. The web genie has fixed it so you can have access to the specific details you require through links.

Here is an updated list of the books I've written, with brief descriptions of each, and a preview of the two books I'm working on now.

Here is a list of the libretti I've done with composer Robert Starer, and excerpts from our Magdalen at the Tomb. [see Woodstock cycle cassette].

Here are recent photos and new selections from my "after five" artwork, the colored pencil renderings I do in the evening. I draw scenes or feelings I remember, or am trying to remember, or sometimes just the prevailing mood of the day. I also draw characters and scenes of work in progress, in this case The Queen of the Underworld, which I'm hoping to complete by the end of 2004, along with my other project: The Making of a Writer: The Journals of Gail Godwin, vol. I, (1961-1965) edited with Rob Neufeld.

Here you'll find my own selections from the existing biographical data. One of the many advantages of being a living author is that you can still correct misprints and misapprehensions concerning your own life. There are all sorts of stories about us tumbling around in our indiscriminate "display all" culture, and we need filters and reality checks as we make our way through its chatty ether. In one prominent encyclopedia of women writers "from the middle ages to the present," I am listed as having two sons. Either my entry got confused with another woman's, or on some occasion I must have spoken lovingly about my cats and someone assumed "Ambrose and Felix" must be my children.

Having unequivocally decided, this past year, that I don't want a biographer narrating the story of my life, shaped and tinted by whatever spins and agendas happen to be in fashion when it's too late for me to answer back, I've begun editing my journals with Rob Neufeld, book columnist for The Asheville Citizen-Times and director of the "Together We Read" program in North Carolina. We hope to publish volume one of The Making of a Writer in 2005. [Rob did the interviews and reading group guides for the 2004 Ballantine Reader's Circle editions of The Finishing School and Evenings at Five: A Novel and Five New Stories.]

Among the thousands of things I miss about life with Robert Starer, who died on April 22, 2001, are our musical collaborations.

It's a heady pastime, making up something with someone else. Children do it all the time, and even when you're an adult, a "play date" quality lingers around the act of creating something with another person. Well, the music's gone; Robert and I never got past our opening dance scene in "Job's Muses," which was to be a chamber opera about Job's three daughters encouraging him to remember his conversation with God before senility sets in.

But I have found two collaborators in other fields. One is Rob Neufeld, who is editing my journals with me, and the other is the architect Frances Halsband, of the husband and wife firm Kliment and Halsband in New York (www.kliment-halsband.com) Frances did the drawings for Evenings at Five, plus additional drawings of the five new stories in the paperback version. Here is a photo of her as she drew "Rudy's medicine shelf" in the kitchen. And here is the drawing. And here is a digital photo I took of her on a recent Sunday morning, when she was making sketches for a new building at Brown University.

And here also are what I consider the most useful and interesting assessments of my work so far, if you are doing research for school or presenting a paper to your book club.

I enjoy your e-mails and keep many of them in my files. Such as this one I received from "Scott" the other day:

"Some thoughts occurred to me as I was reading your lesson about The Watcher at the Gate and I resolved that if Gail Godwin is alive I should e-mail my thoughts to her. Forthwith in the blink of an eye I learned you had survived my statement. Being a man of my word, I have left the thoughts below.

1.If Mark Twain read your advice about Watchers, he might respond with, 'If you happen to see a watcher, kill it!'
2.Hemingway probably shot his watcher between the eyes somewhere in Africa while drinking Scotch.
3.Laura Riding Jackson probably would have wished that for at least one brief moment before she said, 'I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic . . .' had had her watcher on call."

 To read my "Watcher at the Gate" essay, go to: http://www.csun.edu/~hceng006/watcher.html

However, the one thing e-mails don't tell you is where the writer lives, and I'd enjoy knowing whether you're writing from Brisbane or Berkeley or Baton Rouge.

If there is something you need for your research and can't find among my selections, I will do my best, with the help of my assistant, Marie (pronounced 'Mah-ri') Duane, to track it down and see that you get it in time for your presentation.

Meanwhile, warm wishes to you out there, wherever you are. Keep on double-clicking on my site and keep on reading!