Margaret Atwood

Encounters with Writers: 1

Just thought I’d briefly interrupt my series of posts around my strange path to becoming a writer with the first in a new series of recollections around encounters I’ve been blessed to have with other writers. I figure I’ll lead with a big name and go straight to my connection to CanLit superstar Margaret Atwood.

---

Two Tweets

It was December 26, 2011. I was sitting at our kitchen counter scrolling through Twitter when I suffered what felt to me like an aneurysm or perhaps some kind of a seizure as my eyes fell on the following tweet.

When my faculties slowly came back on line I quickly snagged a screenshot of the tweet. I was reminded of that old cliché, “We’ll always have Paris.” Well, I’ll always have a screenshot of Margaret Atwood’s tweet.

I think I know how it happened. A few weeks earlier while performing authorial duties at the annual Writers’ Trust Gala in Toronto, I met Margaret Atwood. Starstruck, I have no memory of what I said, but I do remember what she said. She recounted that at a recent reading she’d given in Picton, Ontario, several audience members had approached her afterwards and “strongly suggested” that she read my debut novel, The Best Laid Plans. (I had spoken to a group in Picton a week or so before.) Margaret went on to say that they’d been so insistent that the title and author’s name were dutifully written down and the piece of paper given to her lest she forget. It seems she didn’t forget. I tried to maintain my composure as she told me the story, though I suspect the look on my faced said “dazed and chuffed.”

At the time, as I recall, Margaret Atwood had about 750,000 Twitter followers. (She now boasts more than 2,000,000.) That one tweet likely had a greater impact on my 2012 book sales than the nearly 100 book talks I gave that year. What a thrill.

Some years later after my fifth novel Poles Apart hit bookstores in 2015, lightning struck again.

I will be forever grateful for those two tweets. Margaret Atwood is a legend in so many ways, particularly in her support for other writers.

On the High Seas

My contact with Margaret continued over the years at various writerly events. I alluded to this in my very first Substack post, but in 2015, I was part of the Ocean Endeavour crew for a two week Adventure Canada cruise north along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador all the way up to Ungava Bay (see our route below).

The cruise was billed as a “floating book club” and I was one of the authors on board. Margaret was also on the trip as a passenger with her family. She approached me shortly after she boarded—which was a thrill in itself—and I’ll never forget our exchange. She has a wicked sense of humour. Here’s how it went after we greeted one another on board:

“You know I’m going to come to one of your sessions and heckle you mercilessly,” the two-time Booker Prize winner said.

“Oh, um, well that would be great,” I fumbled.

“No it won’t,” she replied. “It’ll be great for me, but not for you.”

I was quite certain she was just winding me up, but I wasn’t sure until she did attend one of my sessions and much to my relief, there were no heckles, just her intimidating presence, tempered by a supportive smile. Here we are just after disembarking in Ungava bay after what was an extraordinary experience.

When I returned to Toronto after this once in a lifetime trip, I was privileged to write the official account of the voyage that was published shortly thereafter and sent to all passengers.

For the Birds

But wait, there’s more. In the spring of 2016, I was at my desk at my then day-job when an email arrived from none other than Margaret Atwood. She and her late partner, Graeme Gibson, were instrumental in founding and supporting the Pelee Island Bird Observatory (PIBO), an internationally recognized NGO devoted to the study and observation of migratory birds and the preservation of their natural habitats on Pelee Island in southwestern Ontario. The annual PIBO fundraising dinner in Windsor was coming up and the speaker Margaret had secured had just cancelled. To this day, I don’t know why she reached out to me, though I suspect there were others on her back up list before I got the call. But she invited me to speak at the event. I’m not sure she’d even completed her sentence before I said, “Where and when? I’ll be there.”

It was a lovely event. I rode in the limo from the hotel to the venue with Margaret and Graeme, doing my best to carry on a semi-normal conversation with them. Margaret introduced me. A recording was made of her kind words. (Okay, I’ll come clean. I surreptitiously recorded her intro on my phone if only to prove to myself that it actually happened.) You can have a listen here (you may need to turn up the volume):

My talk seemed to go well and afterwards Margaret and I sat together at a table to sign our books. Again I say, what a thrill.

Margaret Atwood and I sign books at the 2016 PIBO dinner in Windsor.

A final link to Margaret Atwood that you’ll already know if you listened to the audio clip above, we actually went to the same high school (Leaside High in Toronto) though not at the same time.

My writing life has given me so many wonderful opportunities and experiences. One of them has been spending time with literary royalty, Margaret Atwood. I’m grateful.

---

Next up, a new instalment in the series on my unorthodox journey to the published land.