Hold My Attention

Our list of inspiring female authors would not be complete without the inclusion of fellow Canadian and award winning literary powerhouse Margaret Atwood. A poet, novelist, critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist and inventor, one could say she has done it all.

The Handmaid’s Tale, written in 1985, continues to capture us and as Jennifer Keishin Armstrong suggests “has never been more prescient”. To create an image so powerful (white, wide brimmed bonnet and red cloak) that it comes to represent something as important as women’s oppression is awe inspiring. For more than three decades this image has shown up on covers of the book around the world, on posters from the 1990 film, in ads for the 2017 TV series, and even on real women demonstrations for reproductive rights.

Atwood is an excellent example to follow, especially as we venture down the path of speculative fiction. Her words, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”, specifically the reasons behind them, play a huge role in our second volume, Percivious Origins. A tale of an advanced species, with Earth origins, that evolves in the absence of sexual dimorphism, relating specifically to size.

As debut authors, Margaret Atwood’s raw, straight forward advice is invaluable. We feel that her statement in the trailer for her current MasterClass was aimed specifically at us. “The waste paper basket is your friend. It was invented for you by God.”; especially after we scrapped 10 chapters with a total word count of over 25,000 from the first half of our second novel.

Today Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale feels more relevant than ever. Women are now telling their own stories through platforms like #metoo and #timesup. And the novel’s most quoted phrase, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” sounds like a battle cry for generations of women to come.

Her advice to authors of fiction, “Hold my Attention“, is as simple and straightforward as it gets. And it is something we strive to accomplish every time we sit down to write.

Check out Atwood’s master class here.