**A wide-ranging chat with the author of The Handmaid’s Tale about style, vengeance, ghosts, and being a Scorpio**
**Story By Kaitlyn Greenidge**
The morning before I was set to interview **Margaret Atwood**, I got a text message from a friend. “I hear you’re going to talk to Peggy.” Oh no, I thought. Was this a writer’s recognizance? My friend sent a friendly reminder: “She’s been interviewed a thousand times. So go deep. She’ll appreciate it.”
It’s a relief to skip over the small talk and dive right into questions of revenge and star signs and motherhood. **Atwood**, of course, is best known for her feminist classic **The Handmaid’s Tale**, a 1985 dystopian novel about an authoritarian takeover of America. Her works—**Alias Grace**, **Oryx and Crake**, **The Blind Assassin**—are all concerned with the intricacies of women’s lived experiences. In 2025, she published her memoir, **Book of Lives**.
**Do Scorpios make good writers?**
**Margaret Atwood:** Oh, zero idea about that. I think there are a lot of Scorpios in the world who aren’t writers, but apparently they make good undertakers. Undertakers, policemen, criminals, plumbers, underwear salesmen—anything underneath is supposed to be the domain of Scorpios, and they’re not too worried about death either. Is that any help?
**It is. I think that a willingness to look at the dark side seems like a really important part of being a writer.**
**Atwood:** There’s an old book by a poet-undertaker whose name I believe is Lynch. It’s called **The Undertaking**. He says, “The undertaker is the one who, when you call in the middle of the night, will actually come.”
**Another thing that comes up in interviews and in your memoir is this idea of revenge.**
**Atwood:** Scorpios are very vengeful. They can’t help it. But they never start. Would you happen to be one, by the way?
**I absolutely am. Yes.**
**Atwood:** Well, then you understand all of this. So, Scorpios will not start a fight, but if you start one with them, they will carry it on.
**There’s so much about wanting vengeance that our culture shames—especially shames women for wanting.**
**Atwood:** Well, it probably would [destabilize things]. Whatever happened to them in the first place also destabilized, did it not? I do write about that quite a bit in my book called **Payback**. One of the things they exchange is tit for tat. You hit me in the nose, I’ll hit you in the nose, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It’s very, very old. I’m not recommending it, but we are like that. It’s very hard to do **Christian forgiveness**. Especially for scorpions. But we try.
**“I don’t do ANXIETY very well AT ALL.”**
**It’s a daily question in my mind of how to do forgiveness.**
**Atwood:** Well, I think there has to be, first, an admission by the other person that they’ve done something wrong. It’s hard to forgive somebody who doesn’t admit that. But the thing about **truth and reconciliation** is there has to be truth first. You can’t do it otherwise. Did I put in the memoir all the people that I would like to do vengeances on? No, I did not. Some of them are still alive, and you really don’t want to mess up their lives too much. It’s not a forgiveness because you haven’t actually forgiven them, but on the other hand, you don’t wish to actually destroy them.
**I wanted to ask you what you think makes a satisfying ending to a story.**
**Atwood:** Depends what the story is, doesn’t it? One reason people read **Jane Austen** so much right now is that she can still get away with happy endings. Elizabeth marries Mr. Darcy, who has lots of money. Isn’t that great? She learns to forgive him as soon as she sees his house. Just noting that.
**Are you an Austen fan? I have feelings about her.**
**Atwood:** You have feelings about her being too prissy for you?
**One hundred percent. I was a Brontë girl, of course.**
**Atwood:** Keep in mind that’s what books were like then. What makes a good ending depends on the story. We no longer totally believe Cinderella marries the handsome prince and lives happily ever after. We know that there are going to be some complications. Marshall McLuhan, who I will now quote, said, **“Art is anything you can get away with.”** What you can get away with is going to depend on when and where you are living. But the hardest part to write is the middle.
**“The thing about TRUTH and RECONCILIATION is there has to be TRUTH FIRST.”**
**How did you protect your writing time over the course of your career?**
**Atwood:** It depends which part. In the early part, when I had day jobs, I would have to write at night and on weekends. I ate macaroni and cheese a lot and didn’t clean the fridge much. You find time for writing by not doing other things. In 1969 a puzzled man interviewed me and said, “What do you do about the housework?” and I said, **“Look under the sofa, because that’s where the dust bunnies are.”**
**When your child was small and the desire to write went away for a little while, did you ever have anxiety about it?**
**Atwood:** No. I don’t do anxiety very well at all. If I don’t do that, I’ll do something else. So if you’ve had a variety of different kinds of jobs, you just think, “There’ll be something else.” I remember when I was pregnant, my therapist said, “**Baby fog** is coming.” I did not believe her. And then my daughter was six months old and I couldn’t remember certain words at all. They were just gone. Because you didn’t need them right then. Then they came back.
**What do you think of the “tradwife” trend? You’ve lived on a farm; you’ve actually lived the life.**
**Atwood:** I was earning all the time. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we did all kinds of things. From my generation, there wasn’t any reason not to know how to take care of a house. I understand how toilets work, and I can fix this at my ranch. I wouldn’t call it a traditional home life because **Graeme** [Atwood’s late partner] was there all the time too; we were both writers, so we could switch off. He was also a great cook. It was very lucky that Graeme was another writer.
**You’ve written in your memoir about living in a house with a ghost. How do you live with a ghost long-term?**
**Atwood:** Well, the ghost never appeared to me. It did appear to a number of other people. Our babysitter at one point told us she had seen this person coming downstairs in a blue dress. I said, “Why didn’t you tell us at the time?” and she said, “Because I was at the **big barbecue** in a past life.”
**Burning witches. She didn’t want to be suspected of being too witchy.**
**Atwood:** Go through life long enough and you’re going to bump into a lot of these stories. What you make of them, it’s up to you.
**I’m never very good at remembering to ask the fashion questions.**
**Atwood:** Well, I say, **“Think pink, pack black.”**
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**Margaret Atwood on Dressing for Revenge**
**A wide-ranging chat with the author of The Handmaid’s Tale about style, vengeance, ghosts, and being a Scorpio**
**Story By Kaitlyn Greenidge**
The morning before I was set to interview **Margaret Atwood**, I got a text message from a friend. “I hear you’re going to talk to Peggy.” Oh no, I thought. Was this a writer’s recognizance? My friend sent a friendly reminder: “She’s been interviewed a thousand times. So go deep. She’ll appreciate it.”
It’s a relief to skip over the small talk and dive right into questions of revenge and star signs and motherhood. **Atwood**, of course, is best known for her feminist classic **The Handmaid’s Tale**, a 1985 dystopian novel about an authoritarian takeover of America. Her works—**Alias Grace**, **Oryx and Crake**, **The Blind Assassin**—are all concerned with the intricacies of women’s lived experiences. In 2025, she published her memoir, **Book of Lives**.
**Do Scorpios make good writers?**
**Margaret Atwood:** Oh, zero idea about that. I think there are a lot of Scorpios in the world who aren’t writers, but apparently they make good undertakers. Undertakers, policemen, criminals, plumbers, underwear salesmen—anything underneath is supposed to be the domain of Scorpios, and they’re not too worried about death either. Is that any help?
**It is. I think that a willingness to look at the dark side seems like a really important part of being a writer.**
**Atwood:** There’s an old book by a poet-undertaker whose name I believe is Lynch. It’s called **The Undertaking**. He says, “The undertaker is the one who, when you call in the middle of the night, will actually come.”
**Another thing that comes up in interviews and in your memoir is this idea of revenge.**
**Atwood:** Scorpios are very vengeful. They can’t help it. But they never start. Would you happen to be one, by the way?
**I absolutely am. Yes.**
**Atwood:** Well, then you understand all of this. So, Scorpios will not start a fight, but if you start one with them, they will carry it on.
**There’s so much about wanting vengeance that our culture shames—especially shames women for wanting.**
**Atwood:** Well, it probably would [destabilize things]. Whatever happened to them in the first place also destabilized, did it not? I do write about that quite a bit in my book called **Payback**. One of the things they exchange is tit for tat. You hit me in the nose, I’ll hit you in the nose, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It’s very, very old. I’m not recommending it, but we are like that. It’s very hard to do **Christian forgiveness**. Especially for scorpions. But we try.
**“I don’t do ANXIETY very well AT ALL.”**
**It’s a daily question in my mind of how to do forgiveness.**
**Atwood:** Well, I think there has to be, first, an admission by the other person that they’ve done something wrong. It’s hard to forgive somebody who doesn’t admit that. But the thing about **truth and reconciliation** is there has to be truth first. You can’t do it otherwise. Did I put in the memoir all the people that I would like to do vengeances on? No, I did not. Some of them are still alive, and you really don’t want to mess up their lives too much. It’s not a forgiveness because you haven’t actually forgiven them, but on the other hand, you don’t wish to actually destroy them.
**I wanted to ask you what you think makes a satisfying ending to a story.**
**Atwood:** Depends what the story is, doesn’t it? One reason people read **Jane Austen** so much right now is that she can still get away with happy endings. Elizabeth marries Mr. Darcy, who has lots of money. Isn’t that great? She learns to forgive him as soon as she sees his house. Just noting that.
**Are you an Austen fan? I have feelings about her.**
**Atwood:** You have feelings about her being too prissy for you?
**One hundred percent. I was a Brontë girl, of course.**
**Atwood:** Keep in mind that’s what books were like then. What makes a good ending depends on the story. We no longer totally believe Cinderella marries the handsome prince and lives happily ever after. We know that there are going to be some complications. Marshall McLuhan, who I will now quote, said, **“Art is anything you can get away with.”** What you can get away with is going to depend on when and where you are living. But the hardest part to write is the middle.
**“The thing about TRUTH and RECONCILIATION is there has to be TRUTH FIRST.”**
**How did you protect your writing time over the course of your career?**
**Atwood:** It depends which part. In the early part, when I had day jobs, I would have to write at night and on weekends. I ate macaroni and cheese a lot and didn’t clean the fridge much. You find time for writing by not doing other things. In 1969 a puzzled man interviewed me and said, “What do you do about the housework?” and I said, **“Look under the sofa, because that’s where the dust bunnies are.”**
**When your child was small and the desire to write went away for a little while, did you ever have anxiety about it?**
**Atwood:** No. I don’t do anxiety very well at all. If I don’t do that, I’ll do something else. So if you’ve had a variety of different kinds of jobs, you just think, “There’ll be something else.” I remember when I was pregnant, my therapist said, “**Baby fog** is coming.” I did not believe her. And then my daughter was six months old and I couldn’t remember certain words at all. They were just gone. Because you didn’t need them right then. Then they came back.
**What do you think of the “tradwife” trend? You’ve lived on a farm; you’ve actually lived the life.**
**Atwood:** I was earning all the time. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we did all kinds of things. From my generation, there wasn’t any reason not to know how to take care of a house. I understand how toilets work, and I can fix this at my ranch. I wouldn’t call it a traditional home life because **Graeme** [Atwood’s late partner] was there all the time too; we were both writers, so we could switch off. He was also a great cook. It was very lucky that Graeme was another writer.
**You’ve written in your memoir about living in a house with a ghost. How do you live with a ghost long-term?**
**Atwood:** Well, the ghost never appeared to me. It did appear to a number of other people. Our babysitter at one point told us she had seen this person coming downstairs in a blue dress. I said, “Why didn’t you tell us at the time?” and she said, “Because I was at the **big barbecue** in a past life.”
**Burning witches. She didn’t want to be suspected of being too witchy.**
**Atwood:** Go through life long enough and you’re going to bump into a lot of these stories. What you make of them, it’s up to you.
**I’m never very good at remembering to ask the fashion questions.**
**Atwood:** Well, I say, **“Think pink, pack black.”**