“If it's all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it's all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that's it. You're not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You're not going to read that book again.”

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.