Welcome to MAS
The Margaret Atwood Society is an international association of scholars, teachers, and students who share an interest in Atwood’s work. The main goal of the Society is to promote scholarly exchange of Atwood’s works and cultural contributions by providing opportunities for scholars to exchange information. To reach this goal, we publish a journal, Margaret Atwood Studies, for which we invite submissions year round, and we host several panels each year on Atwood at various academic conferences, including at the Modern Language Association Convention (MLA), Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), and the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA). (See the Calls for Papers tab to learn more). To let us know about current Atwood-scholarship-related news or events, please email us the appropriate information. We will include your news on this site and/or our Facebook page and Twitter feed. We welcome your friendship and comments on Facebook and Twitter, whether or not you join the Society. We also welcome you to interact with us on LinkedIn.
If you’d like to join the society, please see the Membership page.
Note: For contact information for Margaret Atwood, see the contact listings on her official website. (You might also have luck @ replying her on Twitter). We do not forward messages or materials to Ms. Atwood.
Atwood Symposium: This Friday, September 13th!
This is a one-day Symposium on the Hulu Adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s famous 1985 dystopia. The novel was published during the challenging period of Ronald Reagan’s America, which witnessed second-wave feminism, anti-pornography, pro-life and pro-legal abortion campaigns, and the first season of the adaptation also came out during troubled times, a few months after the controversial election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the USA, which created an equally tense political scene. Women across the world were protesting for female and human rights, often dressed in the now iconic Handmaid’s costume. The eerie resemblance between facts and fiction is the main reason behind the critical and popular success of both the novel and its 2017-2025 TV Adaptation.
The Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has enjoyed unprecedented academic and popular international success, with the first season winning eight out of thirteen Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Elizabeth Moss. Therefore, there will be a variety of papers presented, from the fields of literature, language, film studies, and fashion, by postgraduate students and academics at various stages in their career. The Symposium is supported by research funding by Northumbria University and represents two research groups, ‘Gendered Subjects’ and ‘Modern and Contemporary Writings’. It is also endorsed by The Margaret Atwood Society.
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2024/09/atwood-symposium/
All the papers will be delivered onsite, and we would be delighted if you could join us. There will be a small conference fee (£15 for unwaged, £25 for waged delegates) that will cover light refreshments and lunch. Please inform the conference organiser, Dr Kiriaki (Korina) Massoura of any allergies or dietary requests (vegan, or gluten-free) or of any access assistance that you may need: kiriaki.massoura@northumbria.ac.uk
The registration page has an online option, so please register and the organiser will send you the link so that you can participate online. Alternatively, you can e-mail the organiser and ask for the link. We are looking forward to seeing you on Friday 13 September 2024.
NeMLA CFP
NeMLA 2025 (Philadelphia, March 6-9)
Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2024
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference – Philadelphia, March 6-9, 2025
Contact email: riley.thomas@temple.edu
Title: Themes of (R)evolution in Atwood’s Works and Adaptations
The “Themes of (R)evolution in Atwood’s Works and Adaptations” panel at NeMLA 2025 (March 6-9, Philadelphia) invites proposals for 20-minute papers exploring themes of revolution and evolution in Margaret Atwood’s texts, adaptations, and real-life crossovers. In what ways has Atwood’s works sparked revolutionary change—or not? What role does evolution play in her texts?
Please submit an abstract (250-300 words) and a brief bio (<100 words) by September 30th through the NeMLA portal for consideration: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21213. Please reach out to Riley Thomas at riley.thomas@temple.edu with any questions.
Paper Boat (New and Selected Poems): 1961-2023 coming in October 2024
A new poetry collection from Margaret Atwood will be released October 8, 2024
Paper Boat can be preordered now!
Description of Paper Boat from Penguin Random House
An extraordinary career-spanning collection from one of the most revered poets and storytellers of our age
Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems, 1961–2023 assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume.
In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful, and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voice to remarkably drawn characters—mythological figures, animals, and everyday people—all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. “How can one live with such a heart?” Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader and ferrying us through life, death, and whatever comes next. Atwood, in her journey through poetry, illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.
Spanning six decades of work—from her earliest beginnings to brand-new poems—this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors.
Book details:
Hardcover | $40.00
Published by Knopf
Oct 08, 2024 | 592 Pages | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 | ISBN 9780593802649
Congratulations to the winners of the Margaret Atwood Society Poster Prize!
The University of Innsbruck, Austria, had a one-day workshop, “The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited – An Intermedia Workshop,” June 2nd, 2023, organized by Prof. Dorothee Birke, Dept. of English, and Dr. Doris Eibl, Canadian Studies Centre, in collaboration with Dr. Dunja Mohr, University of Erfurt, European Representative Margaret Atwood Society and Head of the Women, Gender, and Diversity Studies Section, Association of Canadian Studies in German-speaking countries. About 40 students participated, who were either in a class on utopia/dystopia or in a class on gender theory in that summer term 2023.
1st Prize: The Significance of Family in Dystopian Settings: Offred’s Experience of Family in The Handmaid’s Tale
Monja Bauer
Tanja Niederkofler
Jonas Oberparleiter
2nd Prize: Space in The Handmaid’s Tale
Aiofa Hagen
Silvana Rauch
Reka Pihes
3rd Prize: The Handmaid’s Tale – Space II
Christoph Amann
Larissa Huber
Linda Haßlwanter
CFP for MLA 25, due 3/31/24
CFP: MLA 2025
9-12 January 2025, New Orleans
“A word after a word after a word is power”
We invite proposals on any topic concerning the works, adaptations, and/or career of Margaret Atwood that address the MLA presidential theme of Visibility. What are the purposes and perils of art in unstable times? 250-word abstract and cv are due 3/31 to Lee Frew, York University (lee.frew@gmail.com).
Winners of the 2023 Margaret Atwood Society Awards
Congratulations to the 2023 winners of the
Margaret Atwood Society Awards!
Best Book on Atwood and Her Work:The Fiction of Margaret Atwood, by Fiona Tolan, Bloomsbury 2023.
Best Article: “The Shape of Your Absence”: Coming to Terms with Loss and Grief in Margaret Atwood’s Dearly” in Canadian Studies June 2023), by Pauline Montassine, Université de Reims
Best Graduate Essay or MA Thesis: “Prelapsarian Ustopias: Reversing the Genetic Fall in Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood Trilogy and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy,” by Maya Hollander, MPhil thesis, Cambridge
Best Undergraduate Essay (tie): “Through Double Doors,” by Maria Dunlap, California State University, Northridge, and “The Art of the Fragmented Narrative in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin,” by Mina Baniewicz, Saint Xavier University (Chicago)
Fourteen Days, a collaborative novel set early in the Covid-19 pandemic and edited by Margaret Atwood, out 6 February, 2024
A groundbreaking idea that could only come from the brilliant mind of Margaret Atwood is a new collaborative novel that Atwood has co-written and edited.
From the publisher:
Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng.
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbors. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming, and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.
Includes writing from Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Jennine Capó Crucet, Joseph Cassara, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, Erica Jong, CJ Lyons, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Mary Pope Osborne, Douglas Preston, Alice Randall, Ishmael Reed, Roxana Robinson, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, R.L. Stine, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, Caroline Randall Williams, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and Meg Wolitzer.
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