MARGARET ATWOOD, OPTIMIST

The literary legend on her new story collection, ChatGPT, dystopias, and why she's hopeful about the future.

- KATE KNIBBS

WHEN I FIRST see Margaret Atwood, she's bundled up. Red hat over her famous silver curls, long puffy coat, boots befitting a Canadian winter. The right outfit for a profoundly gray Toronto day, especially since she'd trudged over to meet me. "I walk everywhere!" she says merrily, unspooling her scarf. I almost feel bad for taking a cab to the restaurant.

She's come to discuss her new book, Old Babes in the Wood. It's her ninth collection of short stories, adding to a sprawling body of work that includes 17 novels and 18 volumes of poetry.

Old Babes is Atwood at her most whimsical: A snail swaps bodies with a human, an alien tries to translate a fairy tale, a seance summons the ghost of George Orwell. The collection is bookended by bruising stories about Nell and Tig, a devoted couple Atwood introduced in 2006's Moral Disorder. This time around, Nell mourns Tig's illness and eventual death-it's a melancholy love story as affecting as any of Atwood's strongest work.

As the author sits down, I pull out a list of questions, eager for insight into her new collection and her seemingly indefatigable creative process. I got that, eventually, but with nothing to prove and no one left to impress, she seems happiest bantering. (By the way, in case Condé Nast's expense department is reading this: I didn't order the $45 foie gras. Or the whiskey. You try telling an 83-year-old literary legend what they can or can't order.) Atwood kicks off the conversation with a very WIRED opening line.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Did you know that, amongst other things, I'm also a tech entrepreneur?

WIRED: I heard you invented-was it a remote book-signing device?