Godwin arrives in Iowa City to study at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. There, taught by Kurt Vonnegut and José Donoso, building friendships with Jane Barnes, John Casey, David Plimpton, and John Irving, Gail Godwin finally achieves her dream—and a published novelist is born.

Godwin describes class with Vonnegut in her memoir Publishing: A Writers Memoir.:

“In [Vonnegut’s] workshop sessions, things always seemed a little looser, a little kinder, a little funnier. In May 1967 he would leave Iowa on a Guggenheim grant to do research in Dresden for Slaughterhouse-Five, his novel in progress, but all that spring I chugged along in creative bliss. A writer I had admired had given me the go-ahead. I wrote into the late night and early morning in my Iowa City rooms across the street from the jail…”