Rebecca Godwin

Rebecca T. Godwin has published two novels, Keeper of the House (St. Martin’s, 1994); and Private Parts (Longstreet, 1992). Her stories and essays have appeared in Paris Review, Oxford American, The Sun, Epoch, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere, and she has received MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. For 13 years she taught literature and writing at Bennington College, during which time she conceived and was faculty editor for plain china, an online journal showcasing undergraduate writing and art from around the country. The anthology was acquired in 2015 by Virginia Commonwealth University, which continues to connect the work of aspiring young writers to their peers and the world beyond (plainchina.org/about/). Godwin has also served as judge for the South Carolina Fiction Prize and as screening judge for the Drue Heinz Prize and The Atlantic’s Student Writing Prizes.

Bus Stop

At 6:10 on a March afternoon in Montgomery, Alabama, Ginnie Lackland sat on the steps of Miss Lily’s acrobatics studio, watching her classmates get picked up by their mothers. Ginnie was a big girl, almost seven, who could do front splits and a perfect backbend and was learning to flip herself completely around without touching the floor—what flying must feel like, she imagined. Miss Lily told her to think of a perfect circle.