Writer maintains strong link to Pelee
Despite having TV series based on work, author finds time to host fundraiser
Margaret Atwood has a word for her life since TV shows based on the Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace started airing last year: “insane.”
Despite the Hollywood insanity, she still hasn’t abandoned Pelee Island, where she and partner Graeme Gibson have spent up to a third of their time since buying a place there in 1987.
The more-in-demand-than-ever Canadian literary icon will once again host a fundraising dinner — this year with Vancouver novelist Madeleine Thien as guest speaker — for the Pelee Island Bird Observatory, which is close to Atwood’s heart. She helped found it, after all. “The Pelee Island Bird Observatory is one of a number of bird monitoring stations but it happens to be in a very crucial position, namely in the middle of Lake Erie,” Atwood recently told the Star by phone. “Pelee Island is part of a major migration flyway.” Birds heading north for the summer gather on the Cleveland shore before refuelling on Pelee Island on their way to Point Pelee and various other spots in Canada and northern Michigan. Counting birds on an important route, combined with numbers from other bird observatories, helps assess the health of our feathery friends — and thus of the local ecosystem.
“Birds are the canaries in the coal mine,” Atwood said. “So if birds are doing poorly there’s something wrong with the environment that’s going to hit us later on.” Atwood said bird numbers are declining in North America for four reasons: habitat loss, glass-window collisions, toxicity from pesticides that kill insects, and cats. Locally, she said, purple martins, swallows and swifts are examples of birds losing population because they have fewer insects to eat.
Atwood’s wide knowledge of birds is impressive, especially given it sometimes seems like she couldn’t possibly have time to think much about winged creatures with the many projects the novelist, poet, essayist and environmental activist has going. “It’s insane,” she said of her life since the American network Hulu began airing the critically acclaimed Handmaid’s Tale, starring Elisabeth Moss who won an Emmy for her role as Offred. “I was insanely busy when we were launching season 1.” The dystopian TV drama is created by Bruce Miller, but Atwood contributes as consultant and by doing promotion through interviews. But the 78-year-old says she’s past wanting to join a scriptwriting team, which she did in the 1970s.
“If I were to work on the scripts of the Handmaid’s Tale I would have to move to Los Angeles and be in the writing room, which contains 10 people,” she said. “I’m too old to do that. It’s a 24/7 time commitment. I actually don’t know how these people do it.”
The accolades and awards for the show continue to pour in, though she feels only partly responsible.
“It’s very exciting,” she said. “It’s a great show. Everybody’s doing wonderfully well at it, but it’s not my creation.”
She chips in her opinion, of course, as the author of the acclaimed 1985 novel in which women are forced into sexual and child-bearing servitude, but final decisions are not hers.
“Do I have a veto?” she asked. “No. You would have to be insane to give a writer a veto of any kind.” Likewise with Alias Grace, based on her 1996 book about a servant convicted of murder, Atwood is more cheerleader than leader — given the CBC television series is created by actress-writer-director Sarah Polley.
Still, Atwood has pitched in a lot with the Canadian series, another critic’s sweetheart. “Shows are always a group creation,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky, because there’s no rule that says a show made of your work is going to be wonderful. Sometimes, they ’re not wonderful. But both of these recent shows happen to be wonderful, and I think it’s because the people making them are dedicated.
“It’s a roller-coaster and it’s a pressure cooker and it’s a full-time commitment. You cannot be doing anything else when you’re working on a show.”
Yet Atwood is doing a lot else. She doesn’t publicly talk about her work before it’s finished, other than to say she’s still writing books.
And promoting Pelee Island.