>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. >> I am so delighted to introduce Gail Godwin today, because she is the author of one of my favorite novels, Evensong, which I've been recommending to people since it was published 10 years ago. [ Applause ] >> Gail is impossible to pigeonhole. Her career has been so successful across so many different forms; novels, short stories, nonfiction, memoir, and even Oprah. And without discounting the role of imagination, it's safe to say that Ms. Godwin is an artist who uses her own life beautifully as an inspiration for her work. She was raised in North Carolina, where her mother was a college teacher and a journalist and a writer of romance stories. She went to a catholic school, which many of us now fell we know something about from her new novel, Unfinished Desires. After earning a journalism degree at Chapel Hill, she worked as a reporter from Miami Herald, an experience that inspired her new novel, Queen of the Underworld. And as she worked for the US travel service of the embassy of London, which you can get a flavor off from her novella, Mr. Bedforth. In 1967, she went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and in 1970, she published her first novel, The Perfectionist. Three times, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award. She's received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment Grants. What we look forward in Gail Godwin's writing, and what we always find there, is deep inside into the human heart and the willingness that's all too rare nowadays to consider the spiritual issues that motivate, inspire, and challenge thoughtful people. Please help me in welcoming her. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> Thank you, Ron Charles. I've been an admirer of Ron Charles for quite some time. He used to be the book editor of the Christian Science Monitor. And then, now, he is the book editor of Book World, Washington Post. And he has taking on this great new risk, I think, and you-- if you haven't seen them yet, he has done three that I know of. Is that right, Ron? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Five. He has done five videos, and you can get through Washington Post, either Book World or [inaudible], in which he reviews books, and there is a lot of very professional film work. So I recommend that. That's one way to keep up with our interesting times. I was very lucky to be invited to the first Book Festival, and that was nine years ago. It was on a Saturday, like this, and it was September 8, 2001. And things were so much-- they were different. It's like looking at everything back then in the sepia tones. They had us read the night before. Some of us read. And then we met president and Mrs. Bush in the green room, and I'm being an author who likes to stay at home as much as she can. I was noticing details so I could take them back home. And I noticed that many of the men were wearing-- oh, Lord. Can you click those up for me-- they wearing a black ties, their tuxedos, but they were wearing black cowboy boots. [ Laughter ] >> And when I spoke with Laura Bush, who actually just finished her performance next door as a writer, she said she was always nervous about this festival. She had-- she started a very successful one in Texas, when George W. Bush was the governor, and she wanted to try to bring it to Washington. And she said that I have to do is worry a lot to make sure it goes well. And she must have worried a lot because it all went well, until the following Tuesday. But meanwhile, we're still on Saturday. So the next thing then, we went over to the Library of Congress, and the president was there, vice president, all the cabinet sat at the table with the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and I had just given a reading from Avan Song, is that scene where the-- where Margaret is-- she is a priest and she's a [inaudible] in a school for rich delinquents, really, is what it is. And she tells them if they want someone to come and say night prayers with them, to put-- to make a sign and put it on the door that says NP. And that's how she knows. And then she's surprised at how many people really put work into their signs. They're works of art. So at the table for eight, Mr. Ashcroft said to me, "I wish somebody would make me a night prayer sign that I could hang on my door." This is still September 8. And so, when I got home and recovered from all this extraversion, I spent several days-- [ Laughter ] >> -- making him a beautiful night prayer card. And to do this, you want to have a design that doesn't leave any white space. So everything is filled in. And then while you're doing it, you think of that person. And then I wrote him a letter and I mailed it off, and I got a letter back several weeks after 09/11, and it said thank you so much for thinking of me and so on and wishing me well. Not a word about the prayer card, and I have a feeling-- you know, I did it in colored ink so they may have looked suspicious. [ Laughing ] >> I have a feeling he never got it. Anyway, that was 2001. And then there is quite a different feeling at this one for me. For instance, at the Washington Post breakfast this morning, but we no longer-- we had it at the White House then, nine years ago, and I remember somebody said, "If you want the lady's room, you go down-- we were on the east room-- go down that long hall and turn left, and go down the stairs, and there is a nice ladies room. And I went wandering off all by myself, and sure enough, there was this beautiful room with all the portraits of all the first ladies, Eleanor just as she'd come in. That's over. This morning, several people spoke-- several writers spoke about the importance of being alone. Now, isn't that interesting? A big book festival, authors-- because that's when you read, and that's when you write. I was cheered out by that. [ Laughter ] >> I did give a long time to-- what I might say to you today, what you'd like to hear. I didn't write a speech. But lately, in the last five or six years, I have developed this marvelous ability to just lie down flat in my bed, and think and think in paragraphs. So I thought of what I wanted to say. I first, wanted to introduce myself to you whether you've read on me or not. I am a seasoned writer. I have been publishing novels-- publishing them for 40 years, writing them for longer. I've been supporting myself by writing novels for the last 30 years. And this summer has been very quite. I had a book tour earlier in the spring, and then this summer was quiet, and I reached page 90 of my 14th novel, and that usually means that it's not gonna die on me. [ Laughter ] >> Now, I came across this essay. I've read it before, but I looked it up online again. If you haven't read it, you must. It's-- just put up in Google, Orwell, Why I write, and George Orwell wrote this classic essay about why he wrote, and here is the paragraph that just fascinates me. He says of a writer, his subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in. But before he begins to write, he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. >> And I started thinking about that, and it's-- you know, what is my emotional attitude. And I have the feeling that it is something about wanting to escape from whatever confines I'm in, and at the same time, more and more realizing the precious gifts of the shadows to be found in that-- in those unless confines. As Mr. Francis [phonetic] said, just before me, that you keep writing your books to side with you friends and to fight your enemies. And an emotional attitude is certainly choosing your friends I think that the human-- the characters in books, and the human characters that attract me the most are the ones who-- they always have a mystery to them, and they're never completely solved. There is something unfinished about them, which brings me to my latest novel, my 13th novel, called Unfinished Desires. I'm gonna talk about that for a few minutes, but I first have to tell you that this novel was first called something else. It was first called something else in the contract. It was first called something else with the first cover, and the publisher just kept saying, "Please, please, please, please change the tittle because nobody is going to buy this book. Everybody who has been to a catholic girl school is gonna say, no. I don't want that book. I don't want anything to do with nuns who hit you with a ruler." And at first, I tried to argue my point [inaudible], no nun ever hit me with a ruler. The original title of the book was-- and I wish still were-- the Red Nun, A Tale of Unfinished Desires. And so, we finally compromised on Unfinished Desires. They thought that would do well in all the different venues where it had to go. And I'm afraid that some people might have bought Unfinished Desires and hoped there was something else in it. [ Laughter ] >> But there is enough of that too. This novel was born in me during an online interview with an editor who was asking me-- he was doing an anthology on his favorite stories, and he had picked one ghost story called Dream Children. And he was asking me about my favorite kinds of ghost stories, and I said my favorite probably in the world is one called Playmates by A.M. Burrage, and English writer, my second favorite is Chekhov's, The Black Monk. And I said I like ghost stories that are psychological, where you feel the character is being haunted from inside and may not know it. And quite a few people in my novel, Unfinished Desire, a.k.a The Red Nun, are haunted. Now, I went to a school that looked like the one in Unfinished Desires. If you wanna look at that school, I tried to make a drawing of it. It's on my website, gailgodwin.com, go on to that And there's a-- and then go-- then click on the Red Nun, and you will find a picture of this school. And I added some gloom and some clouds, but it's that school. It was an old hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. It was on top of a mountain. It used to be a sanatorium. Then part of it burned down, then it was an orphanage, and then some nuns came from France and from England and bought it and started a school there. At first, there was a lot of anti-catholic sentiment and-- but then, it became the school where everybody wanted to send their children. And the bishop of North Carolina, the Catholic Bishop, complained. He said, "Here, we have this school run by catholic nuns, and it's mostly Protestants and Jews who go to it." I'm really glad I went there because it set up a mood in me. I can still follow it in my sleep. I could follow the rooms. And there is-- there are several characters in there. I won't say their autobiographical, 'cause one is the nun. She is an old nun. She is 85 years old. She is blonde. She is trying to bright a memoir of the school that will show her the good light. And to make all this short because we gonna have questions, through writing this book, I discovered true working with Mother Ravenel, who is writing her memoirs in 2001, which is going back to the schools beginning to 1908. She somehow resolves the issue in her between of rampant ambition, which I think I must have had, and a place for a spiritual life. So the only revenge I can get on my publishers for this change of title was, in the paper back, there is place in the back where you have an interview with the author, and I said I've had enough interviews with the author in the other books. So let's let me have a few characters interview me. And one of them is Mother Ravenel, and I have her just give me hell for changing the tittle of the book. [ Laughter ] >> I'm now open to questions and conversation. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] [ Pause ] >> How do you do this? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> I mean, I've been watching you, and it's very impressive. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Does someone want to talk? Oh, okay. They're walking the mic over. [ Inaudible Discussion ] >> They told me to walk to the mic. >> Well, okay. Walk [inaudible] mic. >> Oh, that's good. >> In Evensong, you have a beautiful paragraph there about longings and desire and the origins of it, and I was fascinated with that. That's the reason why I picked up Unfinished Desires. Are you expanding that particular concept of longings that are hidden and can be explained eventually in one's life? >> May I take you with me on the rest of my trip? >> Sure. >> Actually, yes. Did everyone hear her question, longings and desire? Are you working on it-- are you still working on it? Yes, I am. And my new novel is-- I made even more of a pressure cooker with just a few people with longings and desires. Yes, I want to get really down in there. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Yes? >> Hi. I want-- would like to know who are some of your favorite contemporary writers, >> I had just finished-- I just hate to say this. You're not gonna believe it. But I just reread Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and I'm rereading Hilary Mantel's, Wolf Hall, with great envy. I read every book-- every literary novel that comes out-- when it comes out, because that's when I do in the evenings now. I read as I watch a couple of shows, like the Rachel Maddow [phonetic] show or [inaudible] show, and Masterpiece Mystery and Doctor House, and Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men. That's about it. [ Laughter ] >> Thank you. >> I think I have read every literary novel that's come out this year. And I've read, of course, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. I was looking at my old interview that they take for the first Book Festival, and someone was asking me, "What have you been reading?" and I said I'm reading this new author called Jonathan Franzen, Corrections, and I'm rereading Jane Austen's Emma. So it's about the same. And I reread Elizabeth Bowen a lot, and my new novel, I will say, is my tribute to Henry James. I have been fascinated by the Turn of the Screw for decades. And now, I'm gonna write my Turn of the Screw with a bow to him. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Hi, Gail. >> Hi. >> Hi. I attended the school, as you know, that you wrote about in Unfinished Desires. >> What year were you? Or do you want-- never mind. >> No, I don't mind. [ Laughter ] >> '56. And now, I just-- I've write it twice, actually, and I just really loved it. And I was wondering if you had any response from people who might recognize themselves in the novel. >> Well, not-- no. But long before I wrote it-- in fact, when I was writing another book-- when I was writing a Southern Family, I wanted to get some information on that order, that religious order. And by mistake, my researcher put me in touch with the original Mother Ravenel who did not get her claws into me because I left town before I got to her [inaudible]. But then, she reconnected with me in her old age and my old age, and she started sending me tapes telling me how to write and what words to leave in. [ Laughter ] >> I can see it now. >> So I got an insight into her. It was very valuable, that you know, we wanna keep control over what we have. She wanted to keep control over one of her old girls. So she very much influenced me in terms of looking and seeing how much of me was in her, and how she could get have a spiritual right life as well. >> Good. Thank you. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> The protagonist in Evensong began in Father Melancholy's daughter, are there any other characters from your older books that you'd like to revisit and resurrect in a future work? >> No, but I wold like to resurrect Magda and the good husband, she's dead, even in the book. And there are certain kinds of characters that you don't finish with, like Unfinished Desires, there is a character called Mod [phonetic], who's troubled right into her old age. So she didn't get a start in writing until she is 70. And I'm doing another character like that in my new book as a girl of 10, and she's alone with her summer guardian who is a very peculiar woman. And that's the Turn of the Screw slant. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Hi. >> Yes. >> I have more of a comment and appreciation than a question, and-- >> Oh, thank you. >> I guess I've been an avid reader since I was six or seven, and probably been an avid reader of your works since you started writing. >> Oh, thank you. >> And have just-- am so-- you're what inspired me to come down here in the mall today. And I just-- >> [Inaudible] with you back to the convent. [ Laughter ] >> So I'm just delighted to see your progress, and follow it. I have a couple other questions, but I'll write you an email. I presume on your website, there is someway to-- >> If you email me, just be sure to put Gail K. Godwin, 'cause there is a lot of Gail Godwin's. There is a tennis champion, there is a Brooklyn School teacher, there is a painter. So gailkgodwin@yahoo.com. >> Okay, I will. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much, . I think that's all. That's our time. Been a pleasure. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.