Writers for Democratic Action and Book the Vote present…

in conversation with WDA national steering committee member

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021

Thursday, September 29,  11 AM (PT), 12 PM (MT), 1 PM (CT) / 2 PM (ET)

Join Writers for Democratic Action (WDA) on Thursday, September 29th at 2 pm EST for a special online event with Margaret Atwood in conversation with Rachel DeWoskin, as a part of WDA’s Book the Vote Democracy Book Club. They will be discussing Atwood’s Burning Questions, and the intersections between literature and democracy.

Book the Vote is a national drive bringing together readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians in order to register voters in advance of the 2022 elections.

In this brilliant selection of essays, the award-winning, best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments offers her funny, erudite, endlessly curious, and uncannily prescient take on everything from whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia to the importance of how to define granola—and seeks answers to Burning Questions such as...

• Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? Including thoughts on the writing of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx & Crake, and her other beloved works.
• How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
• How can we live on our planet?
• Is it true? And is it fair?
• What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?

In more than fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic. From when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to Atwood’s views on the climate crisis, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays.  Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the Maddaddam trilogy.  Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.  In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed in 2022 with Burning Questions, a selection of essays from 2004 - 2021.  Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.  In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature.  She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright, and puppeteer.  She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Two Menus: Poems (The University of Chicago Press, 2020); Banshee (Dottir Press, 2019); Someday We Will Fly (Penguin, 2019); Blind (Penguin, 2014); Big Girl Small (FSG, 2011); Repeat After Me (The Overlook Press, 2009); and Foreign Babes in Beijing(WW Norton, 2005). She is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago, and an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.

WRITERS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION presents the DEMOCRACY BOOK CLUB: Burning Questions: An Afternoon with Margaret Atwood and Rachel DeWoskin