As part of the Provost’s Lecture Series, Oregon State University will welcome Margaret Atwood, award-winning, bestselling author and poet, on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center. The event will be hosted by Jennifer Richter, associate professor of literature at OSU and poet.
Margaret Atwood is an 84-year-old Canadian novelist and poet, who has written over 50 books.
“This is an incredibly rare, lucky, opportunity to hear from really, one of the most important literary voices in the entire world,” Richter said.
Atwood just published a new book titled “Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023” that is a collection of the poems she wrote over the last 60 years. Richter said that “Paper Boat” will be discussed during the conversation.
Atwood covers different topics and writes across different genres — poetry, critical essays, novels, short stories, children books and graphic novels — but what is common to all of these, said Richter, is that her voice is always asking you to pay attention to everything.
“Writing that much, that well for that long is incredible,” Richter said.
One of Atwood’s most famous works is the “Handmaid’s Tale,” a futuristic dystopian novel set in The Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States. Richter said that Atwood has a fantastic imagination, but that the author is also really strict about the fact that she uses history, and that everything she wrote in “The Handmaid Tale” and its sequel, “The Testaments,” has a precedent in history.
There is a live stream option available here, with a box where people can enter questions that they would like Richter to ask Atwood. Richter said that a lot of the questions she received so far show that many people want to talk about The Handmaid’s Tale, the elections and history.
“It’s also pretty incredible timing, I think, that she is showing here two weeks after the elections. And so absolutely, we will be talking about the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Testament’ in this particular post-election moment,” Richter said.
Richter also wants to ask Atwood to talk about her upbringing and how it has influenced who she is now and what she writes.
“You won’t be disappointed,” Richter said. “I think it will be a wonderful conversation.”
