Description
In choosing stories for this companion volume to The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, Margaret Atwood and Robert 4Weaver have combined their different but complementary experiences of the Canadian short story and their extensive knowledge of the genre. Margaret Atwood is one of Canada's leading short-story writers. Besides her famous novels, she has published two collections, Dancing Girls and Bluebeard's Egg, that contain some of the most widely anthologized modern Canadian stories. Robert Weaver has edited ten anthologies, and has encouraged many young writers who are now well known.
About the authors
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
Robert Weaver was Canada’s pre-eminent literary impresario. He joined the CBC in 1948, and for almost four decades he guided the most significant cultural programs in the country. His radio programs, especially Anthology, provided an encouraging yet rigorous forum for story-writers, as did the Tamarack Review, of which he was a co-founder and the inspiring force. In 1979, he founded the Canadian Literary Awards, co-sponsored by the CBC and various partners, including the Canada Council for the Arts and Saturday Night, which since 1994 has published the winning stories. As well as organizing the Canadian Literary Competition, Robert Weaver was fiction editor of Saturday Night. He edited many anthologies, including six editions of Canadian Short Stories and The Anthology Anthology: A Selection from Thirty Years of CBC Radio’s “Anthology.” He co-edited two editions each of The Oxford Anthology of Canadian Literature and The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English, and he was the editor of Mavis Gallant’s collection The End of the World and Other Stories.
Editorial Reviews
"a directness of approach and style that is very attractive...the level is high." - Julian Symons, Sunday Times
"an excellent introduction to this flourishing genre." - Guardian
Other titles by
Big Girls Don't Cry
A Memoir About Taking Up Space
Perdidas en el bosque / Old Babes in the Wood: Stories
Los testamentos / The Testaments
Paper Boat
New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023
El cuento de la criada, / The Handmaid's Tale
Chicas bailarinas / Dancing Girls
The Canadian Shields
Stories and Essays
El asesino ciego / The Blind Assassin
Farley and Claire
A Love Story
Burning Questions
Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2022
