“Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldn't do it that way, empty, you wouldn't wait, you would jump with the light still in you.”

Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and inventor

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published fiction, poetry, nonfiction, children’s books, and graphic novels, and she is best known for her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Her work spans 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, and two graphic novels, along with small-press editions of poetry and fiction. She has received major honors including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Order of Canada, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for literature, and lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA. Several of her works have been adapted for film and television.