Margaret Atwood and the Importance of Voice

I wanted to share this link from the Cornell Daily Sun. I would have loved to have attended the lecture.  I can easily imagine the audience at the Statler: oxford shirted freshmen hoping to be score points with their creative writing TA, third wave feminists (both male and female) wearing  bamboo/hemp fiber threads, a row of MFA writers in the front affecting alert-yet-not-too-impressed personae (while all clutching copies of The Handmaid's Tale for her to sign), preening distinguished professors in black turtlenecks (clutching copies of their own works),  a handful of poli-sci students ready to debate Orwell's dystopia if anyone would give them the microphone, all rounded out by various fans, groupies and sycophants.

I would have been wearing organic bamboo.  I would have been a groupie.  I have this thing for creative minds that used to get me into trouble.

Remind me to one day tell you the story of a certain sketchy professor who was delivered his comeuppance when his former student/lover immortalized him in all of his importance impotence in her New York Times bestseller. 

I am no Atwood (not anywhere near) but I have a lot of stories to tell due to living with a MFA writer.  My life was not mundane to begin with but it was certainly enriched by living with him; he and his colleagues provided fodder on a daily basis.  Greed, sloth, envy, lust- it was all there in bombastic, technicolor format.

http://cornellsun.com/section/arts/content/2011/03/31/margaret-atwood-and-importance-voice

You can watch her reading below.