Behind the Book — Episode 124
Sixty Years at the Desk: Margaret Atwood on Nesting a Story
Nora Ellis in conversation with Margaret Atwood
Recorded August 5, 2026 · 01:54
https://behindthebookfm.com/episodes/the-blind-assassin

This interview is a voiced dramatisation written by our team, drawn from the
author's publicly documented remarks on craft.

——————————————————————————————

[00:00] Nora Ellis:
You've been publishing for six decades. What has stayed the same about how you work?

[00:06] Margaret Atwood:
The longhand. I still start with a notebook, in the morning, badly. Bad early pages don't frighten me anymore — they're the raw material, not the verdict. What has changed is that I no longer wait for a good mood. If you wait for the muse, you'll be waiting behind a great many people.

[00:26] Nora Ellis:
The Blind Assassin nests one story inside another. How do you keep that from collapsing?

[00:33] Margaret Atwood:
You keep asking who is telling this, and why now, and who they're afraid of. A frame story is only a trick if the teller has no motive. Once the teller wants something from the listener — forgiveness, usually, or an alibi — the nesting holds. Readers are far better at tracking layers than editors fear.

[00:54] Nora Ellis:
Your work is often read as prophecy. Do you enjoy that?

[00:59] Margaret Atwood:
Not particularly. I put nothing in my speculative books that human beings haven't already done somewhere, so it isn't prophecy, it's filing. The unsettling part is not that I imagined it. It's that I only had to look it up.

[01:15] Nora Ellis:
What's the purpose of writing, at this point in your life?

[01:20] Margaret Atwood:
Curiosity, mostly, and the fact that I'm unfit for other employment. But underneath that — a book is a message in a bottle from someone who may be dead by the time you open it. Writing is how the living keep talking to strangers. It seems worth doing.

[01:39] Nora Ellis:
One rule for a writer starting out?

[01:43] Margaret Atwood:
Finish things, and keep the receipts. Read your contracts as carefully as you read your reviews — more carefully, actually.