Dancing Girls is Margaret Atwood’s highly praised first collection of short fiction. In it she explores the dark intricacies of the mind, the complexities of human relationships, and the clashes between cultures. In the stories, the mundane and the bizarre intersect in unexpected ways: ex-wives indulge in an odd feast at a psychiatrist’s funeral; a young student is pursued by an obsessed immigrant; an old woman stores up supplies against an impending cataclysm. The fourteen stories range in setting from Canada to England, from Mexico to the United States, and portray characters who touch us and arouse in us compassion and understanding. In this astonishing collection, Margaret Atwood maps human motivation we scarcely know we have.

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. 

Margaret Atwood's profile page

“[Atwood's stories] combine superb control and selectivity with an almost rambunctious vitality. . . . A stunning collection. . . . With a deft turn of phrase, a poet's delicate pounce upon just the right word, she manages to convey the complexities and contradictions of ordinary life.” —Anne Tyler, New York Times Book Review
“Margaret Atwood is a deeply serious writer who is also wildly funny.” —Chatelaine
“Deft, sardonic: quintessential Atwood.” —Globe and Mail
“Margaret Atwood’s stories are fierce parables about the horror of city life and the power politics of relationships. . . . A remarkable collection.” —Sunday Times (UK)

"Sheer wizardry, a rich fusion of the ordinary experience made brilliant by symbol, image, and allusion." —Los Angeles Times
"Margaret Atwood renders visual, aural, and tactile events in such crisp, surprising language that her images crackle off the page." —Washington Post

"Atwood has done it again. . . . Dancing Girls is a must." —The Gazette (Montreal)

"An acute and poetic observer of the eternal, universal, rum relations between women and men." —The Times (UK)

"The mind revealed in this collection of short stories is acutely perceptive, in love with language and capable of seeing significant connections between apparently disparate circumstances." —The London Standard (UK)

"If anyone has better insight into women and their central problem—men—than Margaret Atwood, and can voice them with as much wit, impact and grace, then they haven't started writing yet." —Daily Mail (UK)

"The experience of reading these stories is exhilarating; they remain in your mind." —Alice Adams, author of Superior Women and Beautiful Girl

"Everything Margaret Atwood says in this book is overwhelmingly true. . . . You're sure to recognize yourself somewhere." —Spectator

"A brilliant and witty writer." —Cosmopolitan

"Illumines areas of the human condition few writers have witnessed with such intelligence and sympathy." —The Boston Globe

"Tough poet, clever critic, brilliant novelist, feminist, nationalist, our chief literary heroine. . . . A superb writer." —Toronto Star