Category Archives: Uncategorized

The PAMLA 2025 Conference will be held at the elegant InterContinental San Francisco in San Francisco, California. The conference will begin on Thursday, November 20, and continue through November 23, 2025.

This session, Adaptations of Atwood (co-sponsored by the Margaret Atwood Society), seeks papers on adaptations of Margaret Atwood’s work, including television, film, graphic novels, song, opera, theatre, and ballet. We welcome proposals both related to the conference theme, “Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion,” and those not related.

Send abstracts and a short bio to Karma Waltonen, kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu, by 30 April 2025.

https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19463

MMLA Nov 14 – 16, 2025
Marquette University

Milwaukee, WI

40 Years of The Handmaid’s Tale

In 1985, Margaret Atwood’s sixth novel was published. The Handmaid’s Tale was a finalist for the Booker Prize and won the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Prize. Impressive, yes, but the novel would not reach the height of its cultural relevance until decades later. The Handmaid’s Tale has been reimagined in numerous ways, including a 1990 film (with Natasha Richardson and Elizabeth McGovern), as an opera, a stage play, a streaming series (a format unimaginable at the time of the novel’s release), a ballet choreographed by Lila York, art and immersive exhibits, and a graphic novel adapted by Renée Nault. And it compelled Atwood to write its sequel, published 34 years later.

This panel invites papers that explore the rich and varied imprints The Handmaid’s Tale has made on the humanities: how audiences interact with it, how it inspires conversation and protest, and what parts of its legacy have yet to be written.

Please submit your 250-word abstract and brief biography to Denise Du Vernay, dduvernay@luc.edu, by April 15.

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).

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)

Learn about it here.

Our annual business meeting with be over Zoom, starting at 3:30 PST p.m. on Saturday, 1/9.

Zoom meeting ID: 971 2932 5493.

The meeting requires a password; contact one of the officers if you want to join!

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.