Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and critic whose work blends fiction, feminism, ecology, and political satire.

She prefers the term “speculative fiction,” emphasizing that her inventions  are extrapolations of existing technologies and social trends.

Atwood’s fiction often features archivists, witnesses, and survivors — characters who record or reinterpret the collapse of social orders.

Recurring themes: power, surveillance, reproductive rights, environmental destruction, mythmaking, and the blurred line between utopia and dystopia.

Atwood is also an inventor and activist, engaging with climate issues, civil liberties, and the politics of storytelling itself.

"ein klassisches Beispiel für die Spannung zwischen theologischer Erzählung und römischer Verwaltungsgeschichte":

Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐξῆλθεν δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου ἀπογράφεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην.

daughter of Alfred Louis Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber

spent her childhood in highly stimulating environment (community of Berkeley anthropologists)

married historian Charles le Guin in 1953, stayed with him ever since

6 Hugo Awards; 8 Nebula Awards; 25 Locus Awards; 2nd woman honored (in 2003) as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

main topics / influences: cultural anthropology & the Golden Bough; (jungian) archetypes; (philosophical) taoism; mythology

two major cycles: Earthsea cycle (high fantasy) and Hainish cycle (soft sci-fi)

in cca 20 minutes You will be asked a question: "Is the planet on which Earthsea cycle stories unfold part of the Ekumen/Hain universe ?"

"Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust… In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence… Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies."

(Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions)

P.S. Slava Ukrajine 🇺🇦