Gail Godwin was born on June 18, 1937 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents, Kathleen Krahenbuhl and Mose Winston Godwin, were both from North Carolina, but visiting cousins in Alabama when Godwin was born. Godwin's parents divorced two years later. After the breakup, Gail and her mother moved in with her grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. They moved again to Weaverville, NC and then to Asheville, NC. Her grandfather died in 1939, so Godwin was raised by her mother and grandmother in Asheville, where they lived until 1948.