On Writers and Writing

What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and the development of her writing career, the author examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse!

Atwood's wonderful collection of lectures isn't so much advice on how to write as it is a series of ruminations on the deeper problems and joys of being a writer, such as what moral debt we may owe the reader. She calls on past great writers like helpful friends for their adivce

As one of literature's luminaries, surely Margaret Atwood possesses a magical secret we can truffle out?

It's an absorbing book, which you read with pleasure and benefit...

'On Writers and Writing,' is frequently hilarious

Juggling well worn subjects which "get murky or pretentious", this is a streetwise, erudite suggestive enquiry into problems and myths of the writer's role. Her light touch on hard thoughts, her humour and eclectic quotations, lend enchantment to an argument that has as many undulating tentacles as a well developed sea anemone

Her witty, occasionally self-depracating and always ingenious approach is a delight

A witty and profound rumination about writing

A playful, informed and briskly sensible discussion of the writing life

'an absorbing book, which you read with pleasure and benefit... the sense of an agile mind revolving sophisticated ideas'

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty works, including fiction, poetry and critical essays, and her books have been published in over thirty-five countries. She has won many literary awards and prizes.