Book Passage Presents

Margaret Atwood

Celebrating the release of

Burning Questions

Recorded: 03/01/2022

Book Passage Presents

Margaret Atwood

Celebrating the release of

Burning Questions

Recorded: 03/01/2022

Join Margaret Atwood live to celebrate the release of her book Burning Questions.

“With her bold imagination, calm insight, and wit, Atwood gathers diverse strands into a marvellous collection ranging from the history of forests to the nature of science fiction and beyond. Burning Questions is a delicious antidote to intellectual fragmentation that left me inspired” Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life

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 debt and tech to the climate crisis and freedom and the importance of how to define granola—and seeks answers to Burning Questions such as…

• Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?
• 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 humour 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 debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to how to define granola, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.

Margaret Atwood photo by Jean Malek; Judy Blume photo courtesy of the publisher

Margaret Atwood

About Margaret Atwood

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 for a decade. 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.

Judy Blume

About Judy Blume

Judy Blume spent her childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, making up stories inside her head. She has since published twenty-nine books, including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. She has written four novels for adults, In the Unlikely Event, Summer Sisters, Smart Women, and Wifey, all of them New York Times bestsellers. She was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2004. She and her husband George Cooper are proud to be co-founders of the Books & Books affiliate in Key West.