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Atwood is shortlisted for Booker Prize
The excitement builds as thirteen shrinks to six! The long list for the Booker prize has been reduced to the six finalists, including Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, which comes out a week from today (!!) and Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte (both authors have won the award previously, Atwood for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and Rushdie for Midnight’s Children in 1981).
The other finalists are Lucy Ellmann, Bernardine Evaristo, Chigozie Obioma, and Elif Shafak. Information about these books can be found at the NYT.
The winner will be announced Oct. 14 at a ceremony in London and will receive a prize of £50,000 (NYT estimates $61,000 USD today).
Atwood among 2019 Center for Fiction honorees
At the Center for Fiction’s benefit and awards dinner on Dec. 10 to be held in New York, Bruce Miller, creator and showrunner of The Handmaid’s Tale series on Hulu; author and producer Margaret Atwood; and Hulu executive Craig Erwich will be presented the center’s first ever On Screen Award for an adaptation that reflects the “complexity and vision of great novels.”
At the same ceremony, literary agent Lynn Nesbit will receive the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, given to “an editor, publisher, or agent who has discovered, nurtured, and championed fiction writers.”
The news was reported Tuesday by the Associated Press.
Hulu renews The Handmaid’s Tale for a fourth season
Variety (among others) is reporting that there will be a season four.
It is no surprise they’d want to keep it around– Hulu says THT “is the most watched show, original or acquired, on the streaming service.”
Atwood’s The Testaments included in Booker longlist, is in the running for the Booker Prize
Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and is in the running again for the prize for her upcoming novel The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, which will be released on September 10. Atwood has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, first for The Handmaid’s Tale in 1986, when she lost out to Kingsley Amis, and most recently in 2003 for Oryx and Crake.
The Guardian reports that 13 finalists were chosen among 131 novels for the longlist. Previous winner Salman Rushdie is also on the longlist (Rushdie won in 1981 for Midnight’s Children). Among the other eleven are the American-born Lucy Ellmann (who moved to England as a teenager), English writer Jeanette Winterson, Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma, and Irish author Kevin Barry.
According to the New York Times, “a ferocious nondisclosure agreement” prevented the prize’s judges from revealing any of the plot of The Testaments, but they did say it is “terrifying and exhilarating.”
A note about The Booker Prize:
The Booker is the most prestigious British literary award and comes with a handsome prize of £50,000. The prize was originally known as the Booker–McConnell Prize, when the Booker–McConnell company began sponsoring the prize in 1969. Later it became known as simply the Booker Prize. It was previously awarded to a full-length novel written in English by an author from the Commonwealth of Nations or Ireland. but now can be awarded to any English language novel published in the UK. As of June 1, 2019, the Booker Prize is now sponsored by the Crankstart Foundation of California not the Man Group as it was for the past 18 years (when it was referred to as the Man Booker Prize), and is known again as simply the Booker Prize.
TV rights to The Edible Woman acquired by eOne
Variety is reporting that the rights to Margaret Atwood’s first novel, 1969’s The Edible Woman, have been acquired by Entertainment One. Variety reports that eOne (On the Basis of Sex, Designated Survivor) will hold worldwide rights to the series in addition to producing it. Francine Zuckerman of Z Films and Karen Shaw of Quarterlife Crisis Productions will serve as executive producers.
Tour dates for The Testaments announced
Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited followup to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, will be released in September, and along with it, Atwood will embark on a reading and speaking tour. We are releasing information on our Twitter page as we learn of individual dates, but all of them can be found on the events page of Atwood’s website, found here. So far, only UK, Ireland, and Canada book tour dates have been officially released (though other Atwood-related events in the United States and elsewhere are frequently announced, and are mentioned on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as we learn about them). We invite you to engage with us on social media, and are happy to re-post Atwood-related news.
The Guardian chooses Cat’s Eye for April reading group book
The Guardian recently took votes (which we at Atwood Society participating in, nominating Cat’s Eye as a matter of fact) for which Margaret Atwood book should be their reading group’s pick for April. In their announcement, The Guardian explains their choice, “the 1988 novel was shortlisted for the Booker prize and the Canadian Governor General’s award, and was described in the New York Times as ‘the finest addition to the Best Girlfriend genre yet.’”
Though Cat’s Eye is perhaps not as brutal as The Handmaid’s Tale, do not expect a soft book. There is plenty of betrayal and cruelty to go around, but still a lot of humor and beauty as well. This is a novel you won’t soon forget.
VH1 Trailblazer Honors to fete Margaret Atwood
What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day?
VH1 Trailblazer Honors 2019 will honor Margaret Atwood, along with #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Academy Award nominee Ava DuVernay. *
The special will air on both VH1 and Logo on March 8 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.
*Ava DuVernay is no relation to Atwood Society officer Denise Du Vernay.
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