The Making Of Margaret Atwood

Fame is not new to Margaret Atwood — it’s a by-product of life as a perennially prizewinning, bestselling author.

- Tajja Isen And Daniel Viola

But in September, The Testaments, her long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was released, and she became something else entirely: a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The novel, set in a not-so-distant United States where fundamentalist fascists have gained power and stripped away women’s rights, sold more than 300,000 copies across the US, the UK, and Canada within the first two weeks alone. Atwood appeared on cover after cover leading up to the launch — Time, The Sunday Times Style  — and her release-day interview, onstage at London’s National Theatre, was broadcast to 1,000 cinemas around the world. Before The Testaments hit stores, it had already been nominated for both the Giller and Booker prizes (it made the longlist for the former and would go on to win the latter), and a television show — building on the wildly popular series The Handmaid’s Tale — had been announced.

It’s remarkable that Atwood, who turned eighty in November, has reached this crest after spending six decades writing into an ever shifting cultural landscape. When she was starting out, writers, for the most part, didn’t get published in Canada. Canadian literature as a concept didn’t even exist. To understand how Atwood grew into the literary celebrity she is today, we reached out to some of the writers, publishers, and friends who know her, and her words, best.