On Writers and Writing
- Publisher
- McClelland & Stewart
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2014
- Category
- Canadian, Women Authors, Authorship
-
CD-Audio
- ISBN
- 9781713601050
- Publish Date
- Nov 2021
- List Price
- $48.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780771007729
- Publish Date
- Aug 2014
- List Price
- $19.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
A brilliant, ambitious, insightful inquiry into the art of writing from the legendary Margaret Atwood.
What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god of Art? An improver of readers' minds and morals? Looking back on her own childhood and the development of her writing career, Margaret Atwood addresses the riddle of her own art.
Her wide-ranging reference to other writers, living and dead, is accompanied by personal anecdotes from her own experiences as a writer. The lightness of her touch is offset by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing. Wise, candid, informative, and engaging, On Writers and Writing provides an insider's view of the writer's universe, written by one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
About the author
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Editorial Reviews
"Atwood teases, probes, tickles, punches and enlightens . . . a writer who has scratched her name on the tablet of the English language. She belongs to the world." —Globe and Mail
"An engaging book—erudite yet informal, playfully witty yet down-to-earth." —Los Angeles Time
"This amazing woman's voice, this fine writer's constant example, is extraordinary." —Boston Globe
