Shannon Hengen

A list of Margaret Atwood’s “shorter fiction” appears before the title page of her newest book. While it helps to locate the volume within her oeuvre, it also confuses other attempts at categorization. “Eclectic fiction” might be an equally fitting way to describe the eight listed works. And such are the fifteen stories in Old Babes in the Wood : reminiscences and histories of varying…

We chatted at a conference several decades ago. As we had tea on a patio after her poetry reading, I made bold to ask if she would be publishing a new collection sometime soon. In her distinctively pointed voice, without hesitation, she replied with a grin: “No. I’ve read the late Tennyson.” Yet a couple of volumes of poems have appeared since…