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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.

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.

MLA 2024 CFP

Dressing the Part: Fashion in Atwood’s Works and Adaptations
The Margaret Atwood Society invites papers on depictions of fashion in Atwood’s works and adaptations, understood broadly as relating to clothing, style, or expressions of socio-political or technical change. 250-word abstract and bio due 3/15.
Deadline for submissions: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Lauren Rule Maxwell, The Citadel (lauren.maxwell@citadel.edu ) Lee Frew, York U (leefrew@yorku.ca )

Atwood to release first short story collection since 2014

Margaret Atwood’s next book, Old Babes in the Wood, will be her first short story collection since 2014’s Stone Mattress. The collection is available for pre-order now and will be released on March 7, 2023.

Penguin Random House promises “a dazzling collection of short stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together,” and goes on to praise: “Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.”

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

Anthology featuring Atwood to be released March 6

Touted as a “fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales to celebrate Virago’s 50th birthday,” Furies: Stories of the Wicked, Wild, and Untamed will be released on March 6, 2023, and will include new and original short stories by Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O’Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeymi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie, and Ali Smith.

Furies: Stories of the wicked, wild and untamed

The Handmaid’s Tale season 5

Hulu announced “The Handmaid’s Tale” will return for season 5 on September 14, unfortunately without Emily (Alexis Bledel).

Pilar Somacarrera Íñigo publishes a new book on Atwood

Learn about it here.