Beyond ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Margaret Atwood on Memoir, Grudges, & Getting Older

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

Society & Culture

4.2 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Margaret Atwood is one of the most famous and prolific authors of the modern era. Though best known for her 1985 hit “The Handmaid’s Tale,” her dozens of works span literary genres — poetry, novels, children's books, essays, short stories — and often defy neat categorization. Now, at 86, Atwood has written her first memoir. At roughly 600 pages, it’s an intimate look at the ways her personal life inspired and shaped her writing. Kara and Atwood talk about her lifelong passion for the outdoors, how she decided to become a poet when she was just a teenager, and her reputation for having an eerie prescience about major world events. They also talk about Atwood’s fears about the Trump administration’s use of power, and why she still considers herself to be a hopeful person despite her predilection for dark stories. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I've actually been to the Trotsky house in Mexico and where he got ice picked.
0:04.9	Ice picked. And you can also see the tiny little kitchen where poor Mrs. Trotsky had to.
0:10.7	You always forget about Mrs. Trotsky. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:27.9	This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:30.9	My guest today is Canadian author and poet Margaret Atwood.
0:34.7	She's best known for a dystopian novel novel The Handmaid's Tale, which turned her
0:38.0	into a literary star in the 1980s. The book saw another major boost in popularity when Hulu
0:43.5	turned it into a hit series in 2017, just a few months after President Trump first took office.
0:49.7	It burnished Atwood's reputation as someone who has an eerie prescience, as if she could see the rise of authoritarianism and the religious right in the U.S. long before anyone else could.
1:00.3	But Atwood has actually written dozens of other important novels, poems, essays, short stories, and children's books.
1:06.4	She's also a two-time Booker Prize winner, and now at 86 years old, she's written her first memoir.
1:12.6	It's called Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts. At close to 600 pages, it's an intimate look
1:19.1	at the ways her personal life inspired and shaped her writing. I think it's a must read,
1:23.7	and she's such a legend in so many ways. And my favorite book is not Handmaid's Tale. It's Katzai about her young life in relationship with another girl who was a bully, but she's a much more complicated tale. This woman, she contains multitudes, let's just say, well beyond Handmaid's Tale, and I was hoping to bring that out in this interview. Before we get to my conversation with Atwood,
1:44.3	I'm interviewing Dara Kosra Shahi, the CEO of Uber,
1:47.3	and Chris Ermson, the CEO of Aurora,
1:49.5	live on stage at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center
1:51.8	in Washington, D.C. on Monday, December 15th,
1:54.1	these are going to be two really sharp conversations
1:56.8	about applied AI and autonomous vehicles
1:59.5	to register for free tickets, Google Hopkins, and Caraswisher.
2:05.1	All right, let's get into my interview with Margaret Atwood,
	...

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