Writer Margaret Atwood attends the 2019 NYWIFT Muse Awards at the New York Hilton Midtown on December 10, 2019 in New York City.
The 83-year-old Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is a keen observer of life.
“Storytelling is what human beings do. And every single person you will ever meet has got ‘a story of my life,’ which they’re constantly revising,” Atwood tells Morning Edition host Leila Fadel.
In her latest short story collection, “Old Babes in the Wood,” Atwood writes about the pleasures of human connection and the trials of aging and dementia.
She also explores the fantastical, with stories of the discomfort of a snail being transformed into a human body and a mother who uses witchcraft to ward off trouble.
“Old Babes in the Wood” by Margaret Atwood.
Atwood is perhaps best known for her 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a patriarchal, totalitarian state known as the Republic of Gilead.
One of her new short stories has eerie parallels, but this time women are responsible and control the future of all. It’s called “FreeForAll,” and Atwood says she wrote it years ago during the first wave of AIDS.
“The solution that society has come up with is that you would have to have arranged marriages, and you would have to have sexually pure participants, otherwise everyone would just die.”Margaret Atwoods talks about her new book, writing and generational changes : NPR