Margaret Atwood Waved at Me

And it made my night. My day. My month. Maybe my year…

My mother and I were at one of her events, an author cocktail meet and greet, munching on canapes and pretending to be classy. There was strawberry-mint ice tea, coffee-chocolate truffles, and literary conversation where we all tried to sound like intellectuals worthy of the shiny wood columns and waterfront view outside (you don’t host Margaret Atwood in a dump).

I felt like a giddy fangirl clinging to my question: Why did you choose an anti-hero for your book? (The Testaments). She answered that real life, real fascism, has plenty of people like that who choose to climb the ladder. Not everyone is in the resistance getting shot. It was incredibly dark and on brand, and it made me even giddier. I would’ve congratulated her on how well she’d done her research if she hadn’t been, you know, Margaret Atwood. (It turns out she did her research by being born in 1939 and paying attention to events like WWII, the repression of the Prague Spring, and Tiananmen Square.)

As an aspiring writer, I did hope her success might be catching, that it might stick to my dress like the powder from those truffles, at the same time I knew it wouldn’t. She gave good advice though (impress them in the first five pages, something actually has to happen to your characters), and kindness on the other hand may be contagious.

I remembered to wave back.