Jan 23, 2022
Margaret Atwood is a
Canadian novelist, essayist, poet, teacher, environmental activist,
and inventor. She has written plenty of books, many of them
prize-winners. For example, she's won "two Booker Prizes (latest in
2019, co-winner, for The Testaments), the Arthur C. Clarke
Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize,
Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN
Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards." Several of her works,
including The Handmaid's Tale, have been adapted for the
screen, big and small.
I think of her as a bird. In fact that's
how I introduce her - as a cross between an osprey and a magpie.
She's partial to phoenixes. We talk about her book Negotiating
with the Dead (recently reissued as On Writers
and Writing), and about the many reasons why writers write;
about writer grants and Shakespeare; appealing to audiences; and
geese, totalitarianism and not telling writers what to do; about
Dante and bringing stories back from the past; about illuminating
the darkness; spiders and witches, compromise, and interviewers
hounding authors for interviews. Plus a fair amount more.