Lannan Readings & Conversations: Margaret Atwood with Valerie Martin

This is easily one of the best ones I have listened to so far. Margaret Atwood's reading is powerful and includes bits from shorter pieces (very funny), The Handmaid's Tale (with background details) and her latest novel Oryx and Cake (also with background details). This is essential listening for anyone interested in her work or good literature.

Margaret Atwood is an international literary star and one of Canada's most celebrated authors. A truly extraordinary and prolific writer, Ms. Atwood has published more than 35 books, in which she has explored the issues of our times, capturing them in the satirical, self-reflexive mode of the contemporary novel. Her most recent works include the best-selling novels, Alias Grace, Cat's Eye, and The Robber Bride; the collections Wilderness Tips and Bluebird's Egg; and The Blind Assassin, for which she won the Booker Prize. Ms. Atwood's latest book, Oryx and Crake, is a dark and witty look at a world left devastated in the wake of ecological and scientific disaster. In praise of Atwood the Houston Chroniclesays, "Atwood takes many trends which exist today and stretches them to their logical and chilling conclusions…."

Valerie Martin is the author of two collections of short fiction and seven novels, including Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, and Mary Reilly. Her most recent novel, Property, is set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, and takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slave holder.

Margaret Atwood Reading & Conversation