Margaret Atwood: Future Imperfect

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. Atwood’s latest short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood, was released this past March.

René Auberjonois (1940 – 2019) won a Tony Award for his role in the musical Coco and was nominated for City of Angels, Big River, and The Good Doctor. His film and television credits included M.A.S.H., The Patriot, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Player, Certain Women, Blood Stripe, The Circuit, Benson, The Good Wife, Masters of Sex, Criminal Minds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Madam Secretary, The Circuit, Windows on the World, Raising Buchanan, First Cow and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Auberjonois was a founding member of the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and a longtime Selected Shorts reader.

Becky Ann Baker has appeared on television and film in Girls, for which she received an Emmy nomination, Freaks and Geeks, Kings, The Good Wife, The Blacklist, Big Little Lies, Brockmire, Younger, Hunters, Little Voice, New Amsterdam, Billions, A Simple Plan, Lorenzo’s Oil, Sabrina, Two Weeks Notice, Nights in Rodanthe, Starbright, The Half of It, Holler, The Resort, and Ted Lasso. She has performed on Broadway in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Streetcar Named Desire, Titanic, Assassins, All My Sons, and Good People. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Suddenly Last Summer at the Roundabout Theatre Company; Comedy of Errors, Othello, and Two Gentlemen of Verona at the New York Shakespeare Festival; Durang, Durang at the Manhattan Theatre Club; and Barbecue at the Public Theater, and virtually in The Homebound Project. Forthcoming projects include Girls on the Bus for Max, as well as the films All Happy Families and Grand Death Lotto.

Ellen Burstyn’s illustrious over sixty-year acting career encompasses film, stage, and television. She is the winner of the Academy Award for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; the Tony Award for Same Time, Next Year; and two Emmy Awards for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Political Animals, among her many nominations. Her film and television credits include The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream, Big Love, Flowers in the Attic, Interstellar, The Age of Adaline, House of Cards, Nostalgia, The Tale, American Woman, Lucy in the Sky, Pieces of a Woman, Queen Bees, Three Months, and The First Lady. Burstyn’s best-selling memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself, was published in 2006.

Zach Grenier received a Tony nomination for Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations for his performance as Ludwig van Beethoven. He’s known on television for portraying David Lee on CBS’s The Good Wife and its spin-off on Paramount+ The Good Fight, Mayor Feratti on Ray Donovan, and Kenton on Hulu’s Devs. His films include Fight Club, Zodiac, and Ride with the Devil. His favorite stage role is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, which he played at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Upcoming projects include the film The Vizitant.

A.M. Homes is the author of the novels Jack, In a County of Mothers, The End of Alice, Music for Torching, This Book Will Save Your Life, and May We Be Forgiven, winner of the Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction. Homes is also the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the short-story collections The Safety of Objects, Things You Should Know, and Days of Awe. Her latest novel, The Unfolding, was published in September 2022.

Jane Kaczmarek is best known for her role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle, for which she received 7 consecutive Emmy nominations as well as nominations for the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Yale School of Drama, Kaczmarek made her television debut on The Paper Chase and Hill Street Blues. On stage, she has appeared on Broadway and off, and for 6 seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her recent theater credits include Long Day's Journey Into Night with Alfred Molina and Our Town with Deaf West Theatre. Kaczmarek’s favorite job is raising her three kids and reading/hosting Selected Shorts across America.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel.

CREDITS

“There Was Once” by Margaret Atwood. From Good Bones (Virago Press Limited, 1993). Originally published in Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 1992. Copyright © O. W. Toad Ltd 1992. Used by permission of Penguin Random House.

“Widows” and “Freeforall” are by Margaret Atwood and collected in Old Babes in the Wood (Doubleday, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Margaret Atwood. Used by permission of the author.