On this week's Selected Shorts, we dedicated the entire hour to the great Margaret Atwood.

The episode features part of a conversation between Atwood and novelist A.M. Holmes recorded

at our live show at Symphony Space.

As promised, here is the extended interview.

They talk about everything from feminism, time, writing and dystopian fiction to Atwood's

new short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood.

The collection has it all.

It explores terrifying futuristic visions, whimsical fantasies and realistic depictions

of marriage.

In the heartbreaking story Widows performed in the program by Ellen Burston, Atwood revisits

characters Nell and Tigg, a couple featured in several Atwood collections in the form of

a letter after Tigg has died.

Now here's Margaret Atwood and A.M. Holmes.

There is about this book, A Melancholia, that feels deep and serious and not different

because it's through everything.

But hearing you go back to these characters, this couple is both beautiful and kind of heart

breaking.

One of my questions that I had it sort of phrased in a different way is I want to ask you

about time and has time changed for you both as you've gotten older in the sense that

people can live in multiple times simultaneously.

No older you do.

Old, actually, I know I'm faking it pretty well, but I'm pretty old.

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