2013 Atwood Society Business Meeting
Each year, Margaret Atwood Society holds its annual business meeting during the MLA convention. This year’s MLA convention is January 3-6 in Boston, and our meeting will be held the first night of the convention, Thursday, Jan. 3. at the conference headquarters hotel (the Sheraton Boston, 39 Dalton St.) in Beacon H. The meeting begins at 8:45 p.m. Regular business includes determining the topics and chairs for future conference panel sessions, and this year our special business includes filling some officer roles.
All Society members are invited to the meeting, as are those simply interested in seeing what the Society is all about. MLA badges are not required to attend the meeting.
All are welcome to attend, meet some members, and share ideas.
Atwood’s latest awards
From Maggie Fergusson in More Intelligent Life:
On November 28 at the Canada House on Trafalgar Square, Margaret Atwood was named a Companion of Literature and inaugurated as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. No more than ten writers are Companions at any one time, and it is considered the RSL’s highest honor.
Fellows sign into a great roll book using either Byron’s pen or Dickens’s quill; Atwood used Dickens’ quill. (Though she tested both out first in the editor’s notebook).
A woman in the audience asked about the future of gender relations; Atwood responded with, “Here’s a shocking piece of news for you: not all women are nice.” But, Fergusson reminds us, Atwood has a warmer side, too. “Speaking about her appetite for new technology—Twitter, Wattpad, Byliner—she revealed an overwhelming desire to ‘enable literature’ among people without regular access to bookshops, or libraries.”
Atwood leads the way in social media and new publishing
Margaret Atwood has been the leader in her field and her art for decades, and now she’s ushering in new writing and publishing technologies. Atwood has embraced social media (and even defended the Internet by saying it encouraged literacy) by connecting with readers and spreading the word about issues important to her and her fans, such as possible library cuts in Toronto, via Twitter. Atwood is now working with Wattpad, an online writing community and has co-founded Fanado, a service that provides a “distinct combination of face-to-face online meetings with legally verifiable signatures.”
Writing for the Guardian, Atwood responds to naysayers and those who simply wonder why she doesn’t just relax a bit:
Maybe my dates with Wattpad are a bit undignified. But at my age you can afford to be undignified. You’re free to explore, and to guinea-pig yourself, and to stretch the boundaries.
New Atwood Collection
In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Atwood’s latest book, is a variety of lectures, reviews, and short stories that trace her personal involvement with science fiction as a genre.
Atwood lent her dress for art show
Artist Jane Eccles’s new exhibit opens February 26 and runs until April 10 at the Whitby Station Gallery in Whitby, Ontario. Eccles’s exhibit is called “Overlap,” and includes a painting of a dress donated by Margaret Atwood, painted by Eccles. For more information, see the Station Gallery’s website.
New book to be released summer 2011
Margaret Atwood will soon publish her seventh children’s book, Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery.
Royal Society of Literature Lecture
The Royal Society of Literature announces that Margaret Atwood will be delivering a lecture in London on November 3, 2010. For more information, please visit the Royal Society of Literature website.
Margaret Atwood shares international prize for literature
See the full story at The Vancouver Sun website!
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