Margaret Atwood gets personal with "Inner Advice Columnist" in new memoir

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This is an updated mentation of a communicative archetypal published connected Nov. 9, 2025. The archetypal video tin beryllium viewed here.

You're an 86-year-old titan of literature, person been for a half-century now. You're Canada's champion known author, 64 books and counting. And progressively you find your enactment connected lists of banned books, scrubbed from 135 American schoolhouse districts. Yes, that includes your breakthrough work, the dystopian caller "The Handmaid's Tale." But you've besides been censored for enactment similar "The Testaments" and "The Blind Assassin," some of which won the Booker Prize, the apical grant for English-language fiction. What to do? Sure, you instrumentality to the keyboard and constitute sternly-worded sentiment pieces. But arsenic we archetypal told you past fall, if you're the indomitable Margaret Atwood, you don't halt there.

Here she is taking a flamethrower to her ain book. Atwood was firing backmost astatine would-be book-burners by torching an unburnable edition. It was each promotion for a foundation auction to payment PEN America — a nonprofit that champions escaped speech.

Atwood's books person been banned for contented deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, anti-Christian. She told america she was peculiarly peeved erstwhile a caller prohibition came from Edmonton, Alberta, successful her ain country.

Margaret Atwood: The authorities enactment retired an edict to each schoolhouse boards saying that they couldn't person immoderate books successful the room that had either nonstop oregon indirect sex. What is indirect sex? I don't know.

Jon Wertheim: Science fiction?

Margaret Atwood: Have you had indirect enactment lately?

Atwood speaks arsenic she writes: with a premix of contented and deadpan wit. Last fall, she invited america into her Toronto home.

Jon Wertheim: Do you cognize disconnected manus however galore languages your books person been translated in?

Margaret Atwood: Well, we accidental implicit 50 for everything. How aged are you? Over 50. How galore books person you written? Over 50.

Jon Wertheim: How galore awards person you won?

Margaret Atwood: Over 50.

Jon Wertheim: I thought so.

Published successful 1985, "The Handmaid's Tale" depicts a near-future America overtaken by spiritual dictatorship, wherever a dwindling fig of fertile women are forced to cloak themselves successful reddish and carnivore children for the elite.

The publication would merchantability much than 10 cardinal copies and spawn an Emmy-winning Hulu series. Beyond that, its scarlet costume would go a azygous of existent beingness protestation and resistance.

Jon Wertheim: "Handmaid's Tale" is your magnum opus.

Margaret Atwood: You think?

Jon Wertheim: Your "Great Gatsby." How-- however are you with that?

Margaret Atwood: Well, I would question the premise.

Jon Wertheim: You would?

Margaret Atwood: Yeah it's not owed to maine oregon the excellence of the book. It's partially successful the twists and turns of history.

With the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade successful 2022, "The Handmaid's Tale" began, for galore readers, to consciousness eerily prescient.

Margaret Atwood: Had it been truthful that nary of this ever got enacted, past it would astir apt beryllium sitting connected a support somewhere, and radical would beryllium saying, "A jolly bully yarn, but it didn't happen."

Or didn't it? In 2003's "Oryx and Crake," for instance, Atwood wrote of biology illness and a planetary pandemic. Pick a catastrophe, immoderate catastrophe. Before the existent satellite did its thing, she warned astir it successful her fiction.

Margaret Atwood: It wasn't, you know, this is going to hap without a doubt. "This could happen. This mightiness happen, truthful you should beryllium connected the ticker for it."

Jon Wertheim: What is your narration with this thought that you're the-- prophet of doom, this Cassandra, the forecaster of dystopia--

Margaret Atwood: Oh, you know, I deliberation I'm precise affirmative I didn't termination everybody disconnected astatine the end, you know? Some radical do.

If Atwood can see astir corners, it's due to the fact that her visions person humanities precedent; they come rooted successful existent events. At the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library successful Toronto, Atwood has archived stacks of her research. That is, the hundreds of quality clippings that substantiate her plots.

Jon Wertheim: So this is folder upon folder of your research--

Margaret Atwood: Oh, much of it--

Jon Wertheim: --for "Handmaid's Tale"--

Margaret Atwood: Oh yeah– tons of it.

She writes by a strict rule: if it didn't happen, somewhere, astatine sometime, it doesn't marque it into the pages of her fiction.

Jon Wertheim: Women forced to person babies.

Margaret Atwood: Communists are making women person babies. "Persistent non-pregnancy volition beryllium considered a transgression against the state."

It's not each doom and gloom. Atwood showed america the screen she designed for her archetypal measurement of poetry. She besides writes abbreviated stories, and children's books. For her caller book, a caller genre. Her memoir, "Book of Lives," published past November, takes the afloat expanse of her life, starting with a free-range puerility spent successful the heavy wilderness of Quebec. She was homeschooled until the property of 12 portion her begetter did fieldwork connected insects arsenic an entomologist.

Jon Wertheim: You wrote, immoderate families halt for crystal pick connected the broadside of the road. You stopped for infestations.

Margaret Atwood: We stopped for infestations. So what was that like? You screeched to a halt-- begetter would get retired of the car with his tarpaulin and his ax, and helium would spell to the infestation helium would dispersed the tarp retired nether the tree, and deed the trunk with an ax, and past the things would autumn out, and helium would cod them.

Jon Wertheim: And you're successful the backmost spot reasoning what?

Margaret Atwood: Oh, no, we were usually retired of the car watching him bash it.

Jon Wertheim: What did you larn watching him spell to work?

Margaret Atwood: I deliberation astir apt increasing up with a biologist makes you rather peculiar astir details due to the fact that you're not saying, "That's a butterfly," you're saying what benignant of butterfly. You're not saying, "That's a tree." You usually cognize what benignant of tree.

Intent connected spinning details into prose and becoming a writer, Atwood enrolled astatine Victoria College astatine the University of Toronto.

A young poet, she deed the speechmaking circuit and performed successful pupil plays and revues present astatine Hart House, 1 of Canada's oldest theaters.

Margaret Atwood: No, I'm not. I'm conscionable a amusement off.

And erstwhile Margaret Atwood wants to amusement off, you surrender the stage.

Margaret Atwood: You person to basal implicit there. Hold my purse.

Here's not conscionable immoderate curtsy but, she informed us, the 17th period Jacobean tribunal curtsy she learned for a assemblage production. We told you she's a stickler for detail.

Jon Wertheim: How bash I respond to that?

Margaret Atwood: You bow.

Jon Wertheim: Oh.

Margaret Atwood: Thank you.

Jon Wertheim: You retrieve that?

Margaret Atwood: Why are you truthful amazed that I retrieve things?

Before we near the theater, Atwood showed america different enactment trick.

Margaret Atwood: I'm not getting vibes. Okay? We're doing--

Jon Wertheim: You're not getting vibes for me?

Margaret Atwood: No. We're doing the classical renaissance-- hand-reading.

Yes, she reads palms…another mode for investigation.

Margaret Atwood: People mightiness deliberation that you're conscionable a precise reasonable, benignant of rational person. But, successful fact, you person this other--

Jon Wertheim: Oh, dear.

Margaret Atwood: --this-- this intuition. So immoderate radical halt there, and they're precise logical, and that's it. You are not 1 of those people.

Margaret Atwood: And we tin spot that you volition ne'er beryllium a murderous dictator, for which we are pleased.

Jon Wertheim: Well, I got that goin' for me.

Back to our protagonist, erstwhile she graduated successful 1961, Canadian writers were encouraged to prosecute careers extracurricular the country.

Jon Wertheim: Give america a consciousness of the Canadian lit country erstwhile you were successful college.

Margaret Atwood: What Canadian lit scene?

Still, Atwood stayed and helped recovered the country's now-thriving literate institutions. Along the way, she met different writer, the precocious Graeme Gibson who would go her longtime partner. So quintessentially Canadian, their courtship peaked with a canoe trip.

Margaret Atwood: We were some the kinds of radical that if the canoe travel hadn't worked retired that would've been it.

Jon Wertheim: Good barometer for a relationship.

Margaret Atwood: Yeah if you tin woody with a canoe travel you tin astir apt woody with tons of different things too.

And they did. Gibson came to the narration with immoderate baggage: a quote, "undivorced wife"…and 2 kids. In her memoir, Atwood confronts the complications of the blended family.

Jon Wertheim: Could I inquire you to work a spot for us?

Margaret Atwood: Yes. There are respective letters successful this publication from maine to my interior proposal columnist. Everybody has one. "Dear Inner Advice Columnist, atrocious to fuss you."

Atwood uses the columnist instrumentality to confess that though she and Graeme person a girl of their own, she wants much children.

Margaret Atwood: "We are backmost astatine the workplace aft Scotland, and I've brought up the taxable of a 2nd child. I would similar one, but Graeme has said that a full of 3 is capable for him. I consciousness deprived, resentful, and disrespected."

If that sounds harsh, perceive to the columnist's response, the proposal she gave herself.

Margaret Atwood: "Oh, for heaven's sakes, number your blessings. Some radical don't cognize erstwhile they're good off. Many would springiness the garment disconnected their backmost to person your luck successful men. Suck it up. Cherish your child. Get different cat. Your Inner Advice Columnist." You tin spot she's alternatively severe.

Jon Wertheim: That's precise "get implicit yourself" proposal you gave yourself.

Margaret Atwood: Very get implicit yourself advice, but Canadians are beauteous get implicit yourself people.

Humility aside, Canada's starring literate fig has go thing of a cult figure, and a starring dependable connected each things Canadian. We asked her astir the caller chill betwixt her state and the United States arsenic President Trump raises tariffs and threatens to crook our bluish neighbors into a 51st state. Atwood says the Canadian effect is champion summed up by 1 phrase.

Margaret Atwood: It's a hockey thing. And it was this quality called Gordie Howe, who is simply a precise revered hockey player. And, "Elbow's up," is erstwhile idiosyncratic gets you into the country and you artifact them by putting your elbow up. And it means, "Don't messiness with me." And for those who talk of the 51st state, I bash constituent retired that it wouldn't beryllium conscionable 1 state.

Jon Wertheim: What bash you mean?

Margaret Atwood: It's precise big. You can't marque the full happening conscionable 1 state. And anyway, Quebec would ne'er basal for it. You deliberation you're gonna marque them portion of a unilingual large entity? Think again.

Atwood is simply a pupil of government, powerfulness and the overreaches of both.

She wrote overmuch of "The Handmaid's Tale" connected a rented typewriter successful 1984 West Berlin. She recalls proceeding sonic booms from the different broadside of the wall. In her ventures to the Eastern Bloc she witnessed policing, paranoia and the lack of freedom. In her memoir, too, she addresses the erosion of democracy.

Jon Wertheim: You say, "The overriding of mean civilian liberties is 1 of the signposts connected the roadworthy to dictatorship." Do you spot the U.S. connected that roadworthy close now?

Margaret Atwood: I don't deliberation I would beryllium incorrect if-- if I said it's concerning. There are definite things that totalitarian coups ever do.

Jon Wertheim: Like what?

Margaret Atwood: --One of them is trying to get power of the media. But the different happening is making the-- the judicial arm-- portion of the executive. In different words, judges conscionable bash what the main feline tells them to.

Jon Wertheim: If you're saying the signposts, the signifiers of totalitarian nine are–

Margaret Atwood: --there's immoderate informing lights flashing for sure.

Amid the informing lights, a bid based connected "The Testaments," her sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale," volition statesman streaming connected Hulu this year. But conscionable erstwhile you deliberation you tin foretell connected which broadside of the governmental disagreement Atwood falls, she confounds by saying thing similar this:

Margaret Atwood: Just for the record, I've ever been attacked much from the near than I person from the right.

Jon Wertheim: Why is that?

Margaret Atwood: Well, I deliberation the close thinks I'm irrelevant. And the near thinks that I should person been preaching their sermon, immoderate it whitethorn hap to be, and that I americium truthful a traitor for not having done that which they themselves would do.

Jon Wertheim: And what's your effect to that?

Margaret Atwood: It's unprintable. It involves a finger. Do I spot a small blush? Do I spot a small spot of a blush?

She whitethorn crook america red…she did not crook america to stone.

Jon Wertheim: I'm paraphrasing here, but successful your memoir you accidental you-- you sometimes chopped this Medusa-like fig with the Medusa-like look with interviewers, I consciousness similar we're doing okay.

Margaret Atwood: The earlier me. The earlier me. Now I'm a bully aged woman truthful you don't person to beryllium worried.

Jon Wertheim: Why the pivot?

Margaret Atwood: I got older. I became a blonde.

Jon Wertheim: This was my mode of saying I enjoyed this conversation.

Margaret Atwood: Oh, is that your mode of saying it?

Jon Wertheim: What--

Margaret Atwood: So wherefore aren't you a scary aged witch, is-- is that your-- your mode of saying it?

Produced by Nathalie Sommer. Associate producer, Kaylee Tully. Broadcast associate, Mimi Lamarre. Edited by Sean Kelly.

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