An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.

Author of a written or legally copied work[link]

Legal significance[link]

In copyright law, there is a necessity for little flexibility as to what constitutes authorship. The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of "original works of authorship".^[1] Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, [or] certain other intellectual works" give rights to this person, the owner of the copyright, exclusive right to do or authorize any production or distribution of their work. Any person or entity wishing to use intellectual property held under copyright must receive permission from the copyright holder to use this work, and often will be asked to pay for the use of copyrighted material. After a fixed amount of time, the copyright expires on intellectual work and it enters the public domain, where it can be used without limit. Copyright law has been amended time and time again since the inception of the law to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder. However, copyright is merely the legal reassurance that one owns his/her work. Technically, someone owns their work from the time it's created. An interesting aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that it can be passed down to another upon one's death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, but enjoys the same legal benefits.

Questions arise as to the application of copyright law. How does it, for example, apply to the complex issue of fan fiction? If the media agency responsible for the authorized production allows material from fans, what is the limit before legal constraints from actors, music, and other considerations, come into play? As well, how does copyright apply to fan-generated stories for books? What powers do the original authors, as well as the publishers, have in regulating or even stopping the fan fiction?

Literary significance[link]

In literary theory, critics find complications in the term "author" beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text.

Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author. He quotes, in his essay "Death of the Author" (1968), that "it is language which speaks, not the author".^[2] The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"; it is never original.^[2] With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fictioni, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us".^[2] The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author.

Michel Foucault argues in his essay "What is an author?" (1969), that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author".^[3] For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function".^[3] Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work, a part of its structure, but not necessarily part of the interpretive process. The author's name "indicates the status of the discourse within a society and culture", and at one time was used as an anchor for interpreting a text, a practice which Barthes would argue is not a particularly relevant or valid endeavor.^[3]

Expanding upon Foucault's position, Alexander Nehamas writes that Foucault suggests "an author [...] is whoever can be understood to have produced a particular text as we interpret it", not necessarily who penned the text.^[4] It is this distinction between producing a written work and producing the interpretation or meaning in a written work that both Barthes and Foucault are interested in. Foucault warns of the risks of keeping the author's name in mind during interpretation, because it could affect the value and meaning with which one handles an interpretation.

Literary critics Barthes and Foucault suggest that readers should not rely on or look for the notion of one overarching voice when interpreting a written work, because of the complications inherent with a writer's title of "author." They warn of the dangers interpretations could suffer from when associating the subject of inherently meaningful words and language with the personality of one authorial voice. Instead, readers should allow a text to be interpreted in terms of the language as "author."

Relationship between author and publisher[link]

The publisher of a work might receive a percentage calculated on a wholesale or a specific price and or a fixed amount on each book that is sold. Publishers, at times, reduced the risk of this type of arrangement, by agreeing only to pay this after a certain amount of copies had sold. In Canada this practice occurred during the 1890s, but was not commonplace until the 1920s.

• Commissioned: Publishers made publication arrangements, and authors covered all expenses (today the practice of authors paying for their publications is often called vanity publishing, and is looked down upon by many publishers, even though it may have been a common and accepted practice in the past). Publishers would receive a percentage on the sale of every copy of a book, and the author would receive the rest of the money made.

Relationship between author and editor[link]

The relationship between the author and the editor, often the author's only liaison to the publishing company, is often characterized as the site of tension. For the author to reach his or her audience, the work usually must attract the attention of the editor. The idea of the author as the sole meaning-maker of necessity changes to include the influences of the editor and the publisher in order to engage the audience in writing as a social act.

Pierre Bourdieu's essay "The Field of Cultural Production" depicts the publishing industry as a "space of literary or artistic position-takings," also called the "field of struggles," which is defined by the tension and movement inherent among the various positions in the field.^[5] Bourdieu claims that the "field of position-takings [...] is not the product of coherence-seeking intention or objective consensus," meaning that an industry characterized by position-takings is not one of harmony and neutrality.^[6] In particular for the writer, their authorship in their work makes their work part of their identity, and there is much at stake personally over the negotiation of authority over that identity. However, it is the editor who has "the power to impose the dominant definition of the writer and therefore to delimit the population of those entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer".^[7] As "cultural investors," publishers rely on the editor position to identify a good investment in "cultural capital" which may grow to yield economic capital across all positions.^[8]

According to the studies of James Curran, the system of shared values among editors in Britain has generated a pressure among authors to write to fit the editors' expectations, removing the focus from the reader-audience and putting a strain on the relationship between authors and editors and on writing as a social act. Even the book review by the editors has more significance than the readership's reception.^[9]

Compensation[link]

A standard contract for an author will usually include provision for payment in the form of an advance and royalties. An advance is a lump sum paid in advance of publication. An advance must be earned out before royalties are payable. An advance may be paid in two lump sums: the first payment on contract signing, and the second on delivery of the completed manuscript or on publication.

An author's contract may specify, for example, that they will earn 10% of the retail price of each book sold. Some contracts specify a scale of royalties payable (for example, where royalties start at 10% for the first 10,000 sales, but then increase to a higher percentage rate at higher sale thresholds).

An author's book must earn out their advance before any further royalties are paid. For example, if an author is paid a modest advance of $2000.00, and their royalty rate is 10% of a book priced at $20.00 - that is, $2.00 per book - the book will need to sell 1000 copies before any further payment will be made. Publishers typically withhold payment of a percentage of royalties earned against returns.

In some countries, authors also earn income from a government scheme such as the ELR (Educational Lending Right) and PLR (Public Lending Right) schemes in Australia. Under these schemes, authors are paid a fee for the number of copies of their books in educational and/or public libraries.

These days, many authors supplement their income from book sales with public speaking engagements, school visits, residencies, grants, and teaching positions.

Ghostwriters, technical writers, and textbooks writers are typically paid in a different way: usually a set fee or a per word rate rather than on a percentage of sales.

See also[link]

• Novelist
• Writer
• Lists of writers
• Lists of poets
• List of novelists
• Professional writing
• Academic authorship
• Ghostwriter
• Lead author
• Autuer

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Author

Look up author in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up authorship in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiversity has learning materials about Collaborative_play_writing

• A system for fast authorship by Daniel Hall

Keith Richburg is an American journalist, a longtime foreign correspondent for The Washington Post.

Biography[link]

Keith Richburg is a native of Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University Liggett School, the University of Michigan (BA, 1980) and the London School of Economics (MSc. 1985).

He served as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post in Southeast Asia from 1986 until 1990; in Africa from 1991 through 1994; in Hong Kong from 1995 through 2000; and in Paris from 2000 until mid-2005. He was Foreign Editor of The Post, and was chief of the New York bureau of The Post from 2007 until 2010. He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, riding a horse partway across the Hindu Kush, a journey he chronicled in The Post's Style section. He also covered the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti in 1986.

He is the author of Out of America, which detailed his experiences as a correspondent in Africa, during which he witnessed the Rwandan Genocide, a civil war in Somalia, and a cholera epidemic in Democratic Republic of Congo. Richburg's book provoked controversy in the African American community ^[1] due to its perceived criticism of Africans.^[2]

He is currently China correspondent for The Post based in Beijing and Shanghai.

Books[link]

• Richburg, Keith (1997). Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. ISBN 0-465-00187-4. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Richburg's home page
• Transcript of PBS News Hour appearance
• Booknotes interview with Richburg on Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, April 6, 1997.

This article about a United States journalist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Michael C. Ruppert
Michael Ruppert
Retired
LAPD narcotics investigator
Allegiance	United States of America
Rank	LAPD narcotics investigator
Other work	Whistleblower and author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.

Michael C. Ruppert (born Feb. 3 1951) is an American author,^[1] a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, ^[2] and investigative journalist and peak oil theorist.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

Until 2006, he published and edited From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website covering a range of topics including (international) politics, the C.I.A., peak oil, civil liberties, drugs, economics, corruption and 9/11 alternative theories.^{[7][page needed]} He is also the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil^[1] and was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse.^[3]

Currently, he is president of Collapse Network, Inc,^[8] and hosts The Lifeboat Hour on Progressive Radio Network.^[9]

Activism[link]

On November 15, 1996, then Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch visited Los Angeles' Locke High School for a town hall meeting. At the meeting, Ruppert publicly confronted Deutch, saying that in his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer he had seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing.^[10]

Ruppert went on to become an investigator and journalist,^[11] and established the publication From The Wilderness, a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.^[12]

Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil,^[13] published in September 2004. Crossing The Rubicon claims that Vice President Dick Cheney, the US government, and Wall Street had a well-developed awareness of and colluded with the perpetrators of 9/11.

Ruppert appears in the documentary films The 911 Report You Never Saw - The Great Conspiracy, Peak Oil - Imposed by Nature ^[14], Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, The End of Suburbia, American Drug War: The Last White Hope and Collapse.

[edit] From The Wilderness

From The Wilderness was a newsletter published from 1998 to 2006 by the media company From The Wilderness Publications. The newsletter covered political and governmental issues. It was published eleven times per year but featured weekly updates online. Critics such as David Corn^[15] and Norman Solomon argued that Ruppert on occasion veered off into making unsubstantiated conspiracy theory claims.

In the summer of 2006, claiming government harassment and fearing for his life, Ruppert left the United States for Venezuela, vowing not to return.^[16]

The Ashland Daily Tidings would later report that, in June 2006, Ruppert had accused a former female employee of burglarizing the offices of From The Wilderness, a case in which Ruppert himself was considered a potential suspect. Around the same time, the former female employee accused him in turn of sexual harassment. Ruppert would later in 2009 be ordered to pay a $125,000 fine by the Oregon labor board in the case. The female employee claimed Ruppert fired her after she refused his sexual advances, Ruppert denies this and claims he fired her for "disruptive behavior, poor work performance and wearing inappropriate clothing". The former employee further claims Ruppert approached her in her office "wearing only his underwear and a smile", something Ruppert doesn't deny.^[17][18][19]

The end of From The Wilderness was announced in a post at the website on November 7, 2006. Reasons for the closure were detailed in the article. Ruppert claimed his bad health, glitches that disabled their web store, "problems of human origin" and his departure to Venezuela had led to the demise of From The Wilderness.^[20]

Later that year, Ruppert flew to Toronto, Canada, for medical treatment. The following statement was posted on the From The Wilderness website on November 26, 2006:

"Personally, I am through forever with investigative journalism and public lecturing. I am leaving public life. It is my hope that by continuing to repeat this sincere position that many of the inexplicable difficulties which have dominated my life over the past months will ease. It is time to move on. I spent twenty-seven years as a dedicated public activist and that is something which I am no longer able or inclined to do. The price was ultimately too great."^[21]

After shutting down, From the Wilderness was sued by their landlord for back rent owed on their Ashland office space.^[17]

Further activities[link]

Some of his posting from him on the From the Wilderness website said Ruppert was back in New York, receiving treatment from "sympathetic physicians" for a variety of ailments.

Ruppert still occasionally contributes to the Collapse Network news desk run by former From the Wilderness associate and longtime friend, Jenna Orkin.

As recently as 2010, Ruppert lived in Los Angeles, California and launched Collapse Network to build sustainable communities across the world. But in 2011 he announced on his Lifeboat Hour radio show that he was relocating to Sonoma County, California, because he thought that it would be a safer location in the event of societal collapse.

Critics[link]

Columnist Norman Solomon has argued that Ruppert has a flawed analytical model. "Some of the problem is in how he characterizes news reports. These citations can be narrowly factual yet presented in a misleading way. Yes, such-and-such newspaper reported that thus-and-so claim was made by so-and-so. The paper reported on the claim, but that doesn't mean the claim is true."^[22]

Columnist David Corn has also criticized Ruppert's methodology, and dismisses the idea that conspiracy theorizing is useful: "In fact, out-there conspiracy theorizing serves the interests of the powers-that-be by making their real transgressions seem tame in comparison."^[23] Ruppert responded with an open public letter to Corn. Corn is not able to disprove any of Ruppert's claims.^[24]

Bibliography[link]

• Ruppert, Michael C., Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, New Society Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0-86571-540-8
• Ruppert, Michael C., A Presidential Energy Policy, New World Digital Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1-61539-257-5
• Ruppert, Michael C., Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1-60358-264-3

See also[link]

• Counter Misinformation Team
• Michel Chossudovsky
• Cynthia McKinney

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mike Ruppert lectures and interviews
• Say My F%&$*# Name
• Mike Ruppert's official website
• From the Wilderness - Michael Ruppert's newsletter and website
• Act 2: From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog
• The 2009 documentary Collapse
• Roger Ebert reviews Collapse
• Collapse on Youtube An interview with Michael Ruppert

v t e Peak oil Core issues Peak oil Mitigation of peak oil Predicting the timing of peak oil Hubbert peak theory Olduvai theory Results/responses Hirsch report Rimini protocol Price of petroleum 2000s energy crisis Energy crisis Export Land Model Food vs. fuel Oil reserves Pickens Plan Simple living Swing producer Transition Towns People Albert Bartlett Colin J. Campbell David Goodstein John Michael Greer Richard Heinberg M. King Hubbert James Kunstler Jeremy Leggett Dale Allen Pfeiffer Richard Rainwater Matthew Simmons Richard C. Duncan Kenneth S. Deffeyes Books The End of Oil The Long Emergency Out of Gas The Party's Over Power Down Beyond Oil Films A Crude Awakening Collapse The End of Suburbia Oil Factor PetroApocalypse Now? How Cuba Survived Peak Oil What a Way to Go Gashole Organizations ASPO The Oil Drum Energy Watch Group ODAC OPEC OAPEC IEA Post Carbon Institute Other "peaks" Peak car Peak coal Peak copper Peak phosphorus Peak gas Peak uranium Peak water Peak wheat Peak wood

Margaret Atwood
Atwood at Eden Mills Writers' Festival 2006, Blackwattle Bay
Born	Margaret Eleanor Atwood (1939-11-18) November 18, 1939 (age 72) Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Novelist, Poet
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	Victoria College, Toronto
Period	1953 to present
Genres	Romance, Historical fiction, Speculative fiction, Science fiction, Dystopian fiction
Notable work(s)	The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, Surfacing
Influences William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, John Buchan, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Aldous Huxley, Northrop Frye, George Orwell, Alice Munro, Jack London
Influenced Kazuo Ishiguro, Orhan Pamuk, Graeme Gibson, Laura Moriarty, Barbara Kingsolver
margaretatwood.ca

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. Atwood has increasingly been mentioned as a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date.^[1][2] Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age.^[3] Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.

Early life[link]

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Atwood is the second of three children^[4] of Margaret Dorothy (née Killam), a former dietitian and nutritionist, and Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist.^[5] Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and traveling back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was in eighth grade. She became a voracious reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957.^[5]

Atwood began writing at the age of six and realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. Her professors included Jay Macpherson, and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honors) and a minor in philosophy and French.^[5]

In late 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University for two years but never finished because she failed to complete her dissertation on “The English Metaphysical Romance." She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967–68), the University of Alberta (1969–70), York University in Toronto (1971–72), the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (1985), where she was visiting M.F.A. Chair, and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.

In June 2011, Margaret Atwood was conferred with an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature (honoris causa) from the National University of Ireland, Galway .

Personal life[link]

In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk; they were divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship with fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon after and moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, north of Toronto, where their daughter Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson was born in 1976. The family returned to Toronto in 1980.

Critical reception[link]

The Economist called her a "scintillating wordsmith" and an "expert literary critic", but commented that her logic does not match her prose in Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth,^[6] a book which commences with the conception of debt and its kinship with justice. Atwood claims that this concept is ingrained in the human psyche, that it is apparent in early historical peoples, who associated their understanding of debt with that of justice, ideas that are typically exemplified by a female deity. Atwood holds that, with the rise of Ancient Greece, and especially the installation of the court system detailed in Aeschylus's Oresteia, this deity has been replaced by a more thorough conception of debt.

In 2003, Shaftesbury Films produced an anthology series, The Atwood Stories, which dramatized six of Atwood's short stories.

Atwood and science fiction[link]

The Handmaid's Tale received the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. The award is given for the best science fiction novel that was first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, and the 1987 Prometheus Award, both science fiction awards.

Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to The Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." She told the Book of the Month Club: "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." On BBC Breakfast she explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she herself wrote, was "talking squids in outer space." The latter phrase particularly rankled advocates of science fiction and frequently recurs when her writing is discussed.^[7]

Atwood has since said that she does at times write social science fiction and that Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake can be designated as such. She clarified her meaning on the difference between speculative and science fiction, admitting that others use the terms interchangeably: "For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth." She said that science fiction narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot.^[8]

Margaret Atwood and feminism[link]

Margaret Atwood is part of a long line of women with feminist involvement: she is related to Mary Webster, who survived being hanged for witchcraft in Connecticut in the seventeenth century. Atwood, who was surrounded by intellectual dialogue by the female faculty members at Victoria College at UofT, often portrays female characters dominated by patriarchy in her novels.^[9][10] Still, Atwood denies that The Edible Woman, for example, published in 1969 and coinciding with the early second wave of the feminist movement, is feminist and claims that she wrote it four years before the movement. Atwood believes that the feminist label can only be applied to writers who consciously work within the framework of the feminist movement.^[11]

Contribution to the theorizing of Canadian identity[link]

Atwood’s contributions to the theorizing of Canadian identity have garnered attention both in Canada and internationally. Her principal work of literary criticism, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, is considered outdated in Canada but remains the standard introduction to Canadian literature in Canadian Studies programs internationally.^[12] In Survival, Atwood postulates that Canadian literature, and by extension Canadian identity, is characterized by the symbol of survival.^[13] This symbol is expressed in the omnipresent use of “victim positions” in Canadian literature. These positions represent a scale of self-consciousness and self-actualization for the victim in the “victor/victim” relationship.^[14] The "victor" in these scenarios may be other humans, nature, the wilderness or other external and internal factors which oppress the victim^[14] Atwood’s Survival bears the influence of Northrop Frye’s theory of garrison mentality; Atwood instrumentalizes Frye’s concept to a critical tool.^[15] More recently, Atwood has continued her exploration of the implications of Canadian literary themes for Canadian identity in lectures such as Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995).

Atwood’s contribution to the theorizing of Canada is not limited to her non-fiction works. Several of her works, including The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and Surfacing, are examples of what postmodern literary theorist Linda Hutcheon calls “Historiographic Metafiction”.^[16] In such works, Atwood explicitly explores the relation of history and narrative and the processes of creating history.

Ultimately, according to her theories in works such as Survival and her exploration of similar themes in her fiction, Atwood considers Canadian literature as the expression of Canadian identity. According to this literature, Canadian identity has been defined by a fear of nature, by settler history and by unquestioned adherence to the community.

Atwood and animals[link]

Margaret Atwood has repeatedly made observations about our relationships to animals in her works. Atwood offers this observation about eating animals: "The animals die that we may live, they are substitute people...And we eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life." Characters in her books link sexual oppression to meat-eating and consequently give up meat-eating. In The Edible Woman, Atwood's character Marian identifies with hunted animals and cries after hearing her fiance's experience of hunting and eviscerating a rabbit. Marian stops eating meat but then later returns to it.^[17]

In Cat's Eye, the narrator recognizes the similarity between a turkey and a baby. She looks at "the turkey, which resembles a trussed, headless baby. It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird." In Atwood's Surfacing, a dead heron represents purposeless killing and prompts thoughts about other senseless deaths.^[17]

Chamber opera[link]

In March 2008 Atwood announced that she had accepted her first chamber opera commission. Pauline will be on the subject of Pauline Johnson, a writer and Canadian artist long a subject of fascination to Atwood. It will star Judith Forst, with music by Christos Hatzis, and be produced by City Opera of Vancouver. Pauline will be set in Vancouver, British Columbia in March 1913, in the last week of Johnson's life.

Political involvement[link]

Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being left-wing, she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a Red Tory in the historical sense of the term.^[18] Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson are members of the Green Party of Canada (GPC) and strong supporters of GPC leader Elizabeth May. Atwood has strong views on environmental issues, and she and her partner are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Club within BirdLife International. She has been Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada and President of PEN Canada, and is currently a Vice President of PEN International. In the 2008 federal election she attended a rally for the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.^[19] In a Globe and Mail editorial, she urged Canadians to vote for any other party to stop a Conservative majority.^[20]

During the debate in 1987 over a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, Atwood spoke out against the deal, including an essay she wrote opposing the agreement.^[21]

Atwood celebrated her 70th birthday at a gala dinner at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, marking the final stop of her international tour to promote The Year of the Flood. She stated that she had chosen to attend the event because the city has been home to one of Canada's most ambitious environmental reclamation programs: "When people ask if there's hope (for the environment), I say, if Sudbury can do it, so can you. Having been a symbol of desolation, it's become a symbol of hope."^[22]

Despite calls for a boycott by Gazan students,^[23] and a request to boycott from PACBI^[24] Atwood visited Israel and accepted the $1,000,000 Dan David Prize along with Indian author Amitav Ghosh at Tel Aviv University in May 2010.^[25] Atwood commented that "we don't do cultural boycotts".^[26]

In the Wake of the Flood, a documentary film by Canadian director Ron Mann released in October 2010, followed Atwood on the unusual book tour for her novel The Year of the Flood. During this innovative book tour, Atwood created a theatrical version of her novel, with performers borrowed from the local areas she was visiting. The documentary is described as "a fly-on-the-wall film vérité."^[27]

Works[link]

Awards and honours[link]

Atwood has won more than 55 awards in Canada and internationally, including:

Further reading[link]

• Carrington de Papp, I. Margaret Atwood and Her Works. Toronto: EWC, 1985.
• Clements, Pam. "Margaret Atwood and Chaucer: Truth and Lies," in: Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William Calin, ed. Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies in Medievalism, 2011), pp. 39–41.
• Cooke, N. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW, 1998.
• Hengen, Shannon and Ashley Thomson. Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988–2005. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007.
• Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.
• Howells, Coral Ann. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-54851-9
• Nischik, Reingard M. Margaret Atwood: Works & Impact. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. ISBN 1-57113-269-4
• Nischik, Reingard M. Engendering Genre: The Works of Margaret Atwood. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2009. ISBN 0-7766-0724-3
• Rigney, B. Margaret Atwood. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987.
• Rosenburg H. J. Margaret Atwood. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
• Grace, Sherrill E and Lorraine Weir, eds. Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1983.
• Weir, Lorraine. "Meridians of Perception: A Reading of The Journals of Susanna Moodie" in The Achievement of Margaret Atwood ed. Arnold E. Davidson and Cathy N. Davidson. Toronto: Anansi, 1981.
• Sullivan, Rosemary. The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out. Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 1998. ISBN 0-00-255423-2
• Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004. Print.
• Tolan, Fiona. Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Netherlands: Rodopi B.V., 2007. Print.
• VanSpanckeren, Kathryn, and Jan Garden Castro. Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Print.
• E. Grace, Sherrill, and Lorraine Weir. Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1983. Print.

References[link]

External links[link]

	Poetry portal
	Biography portal
	Canada portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Margaret Atwood

• Official website
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Movie Database
• Reading of her poem From an Italian Postcard Factory
• Margaret Atwood: Bio, excerpts, interviews and articles in the archives of the Prague Writers' Festival
• Mary Morris (Winter 1990). "Margaret Atwood, The Art of Fiction No. 121". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2262/the-art-of-fiction-no-121-margaret-atwood. 
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Margaret Atwood Society home page
• Profile from The Guardian
• CBC Digital Archives – Margaret Atwood: Queen of CanLit
• Margaret Atwood Papers at Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
• Audio: Margaret Atwood in conversationon the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum
• Margaret Atwood at University of Toronto Libraries

Joumana Haddad (born December 6, 1970, Beirut) is a renowned Lebanese poet, translator, journalist and women rights activist.^[1]

Career[link]

She has already published several poetry collections, widely acclaimed by critics. Her books have been translated to many languages and published abroad.

Speaking seven languages, Haddad is a polyglot and has written books in different languages, and has also published several works of translation, including an anthology of Lebanese modern poetry in Spanish, published in Spain as well as in many Latin American countries, and an anthology of 150 poets who committed suicide in the 20th century.

She interviewed many international writers, such as Umberto Eco, Paul Auster, Jose Saramago, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek, and others.

She’s been the administrator of the prestigious Arab literary prize IPAF^[2] or the Arab Booker Prize, from 2007 till 2011. She is currently on its board of trustees.

Joumana Haddad has been awarded the Arab Press Prize in 2006.

In 2009, she co-wrote and acted in a movie by Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab ("What's going on?"^[3]). She also had an appearance in a documentary by filmmaker Nasri Hajjaj, about Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Joumana Haddad on the set of "What's going on?" in June 2009

In October 2009, she has been chosen as one of the 39 most interesting Arab writers under 39.^[4]

In November 2009, she won the International Prize North South for poetry, of the Pescarabruzzo Foundation in Italy.^[5] The winner of the novel prize was Austrian writer Peter Handke.

In February 2010, she won the Blue Metropolis Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize^[6]

In August 2010, she received the Rodolfo Gentili Prize in Porto Recanati, Italy.^[7]

As of February 2012, Joumana also teaches at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.^[8]

In addition, she is a performer and a collage artist.

Bibliography[link]

Bibliography in Arabic[link]

• Invitation to a secret feast, poetry, (2008)
• Two hands to the abyss, poetry, (2000)
• I did not sin enough, selected poems, (2003)
• Lilith's Return, poetry, (2004)
• The panther hidden at the base of her shoulders, selected poems, (2006)
• In the company of the fire thieves, Conversations with international writers, (2006)
• Death will come and it will have your eyes, Anthology of 150 poets who committed suicide, (2007)
• Bad habits, selected poems, (2007)
• Mirrors of the passers by, poetry, (2008)
• Geology of the I, poetry, (2012)^[9]

Bibliography and translations of her books in English[link]

• Invitation to a Secret Feast, poetry, 2008, Tupelo Press, Vermont, USA.
• Madinah, city stories from the Middle East, anthology, 2008, "Comma Press", Manchester, UK.^[10]
• I Killed Scheherazade, Essay, 2010, “Saqi Books”, London, UK.^[11] The book has been translated to French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Croatian, Norwegian, Romanian and Arabic.^[12]

Bibliography in Italian[link]

• Le sette vite di Luca, Children's literature, 2011, Mondadori Junior, Milan, Italy.^[13]

Bibliography in Spanish[link]

• Allí donde el río se incendia, Antología poética, 2005, Ediciones De Aquí, Málaga, Espana, 2006, Fundación Editorial El Perro y la Rana, Caracas, Venezuela.

Bibliography in French[link]

• Le temps d'un rêve, Poésie, (1995)
• Les amants ne devraient porter que des mocassins, littérature érotique, 2010, Editions Humus.^[14]

Translations into other languages[link]

Some of Joumana Haddad's books

• Damit ich abreisen kann, 2005, Lisan Verlag, Basel, Switzerland.
• Cuando me hice fruta, 2006, Monte Ávila Editores, Caracas, Venezuela.
• El retorno de Lilith, 2007, Editorial Praxis, Mexico, Mexico/ 2010, Diputacion Provincial de Malaga, Mar Remoto, Spain.^[15]
• Le retour de Lilith, 2007, Editions L’Inventaire, Paris, France/ 2011, Editions Actes Sud, Paris, France.
• Liliths Wiederkehr, 2008, Verlag Hans Schiler, Berlin, Germany.
• Adrenalina, 2009, "Edizioni del Leone", Venice, Italy.^[16]
• Il ritorno di Lilith, 2010, "Edizioni l'Asino d'Oro", Rome, Italy.^[17]
• Lilits återkomst, 2010, Bokförlaget Tranan, Stockholm, Sweden.^[18]
• Espejos de las fugaces, 2010, "Vaso Roto ediciones", Mexico.^[19]
• Miroirs des passantes dans le songe, 2010, « Al Dante », Paris, France.^[20]
• Las siete vidas de Luca, Literatura infantil, 2011, Vaso Roto, México, México.^[21]
• Los amantes deberían llevar solo mocasines, Literatura erótica, 2011, Vaso Roto, México, México.^[22]

About her[link]

"A poetry that is at once sensual and cerebral, anarchic and self contained"

—Marilyn Hacker, American poet

"A complex poetry, sometimes ferocious, sometimes tender, always moving".

—David Harsent, British poet

"An exceptional poetic voice that renders the transformations of freedom’s writing".

—Enrique Hernández De Jesús, Venezuelan poet and artist

"A breathtaking poetry, that goes to the extreme"

—Tahar Ben Jelloun, Moroccan poet and novelist

"A sumptuous and alluring voice, carefully drawing the reader in, before unveiling soulful insight and wisdom"

—Jeffrey Levine, American publisher

"A poet who tumbles down all stereotyped images of the Arab woman"

—Valentina Colombo, Italian orientalist

"She unfurls in her poems the tentacular word of the woman-hydra, giving way to the voice of a strong and magnificent woman"

—Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, French publisher

About I KILLED SCHEHERAZADE[link]

"Joumana Haddad is a revolutionary, this book is the manifesto. Read it or be left behind."

—Rabih Alameddine, Lebanese American novelist

"A very courageous and illuminating book about women in the Arab world. It opens our eyes, destroys our prejudices and is also very entertaining."

—Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for literature 2010

"Joumana Haddad is an authentic writer. She belongs to the rare species of intellectuals that cannot be intimidated. This book is a lesson of courage for all those who aspire, try and fight in order to go beyond their own limits and chains."

—Roberto Saviano, Italian writer

"In this courageous book, Joumana Haddad breaks down the taboo of the silent absent Arab woman. Scheherazade has to die to be able to tell her own story: that is, to become a human being."

—Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Prize for literature 2004

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joumana Haddad

Lebanon portal

1. ^ http://www.banipal.co.uk/contributors/contributor.php?conid=71
2. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Prize_for_Arabic_Fiction
3. ^ http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=104143
4. ^ [1]
5. ^ [2]
6. ^ http://bluemetropolis.org/index.php?id=73
7. ^ http://worldartist.ning.com/events/ix-premio-rodolfo-gentili-da
8. ^ http://www.lau.edu.lb
9. ^ http://www.neelwafurat.com/itempage.aspx?id=lbb209294-181691&search=books
10. ^ http://www.commapress.co.uk/?section=books&page=Madinah
11. ^ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Killed-Scheherazade-Confessions-Angry-Woman/dp/0863564275
12. ^ http://www.http://www.ikilledscheherazade.com/
13. ^ http://www.eprice.it/Letteratura-per-Ragazzi-MONDADORI/s-3408387
14. ^ http://www.amazon.fr/amants-devraient-porter-que-mocassins/dp/2940127549
15. ^ http://www.lacentral.com/9788477858447
16. ^ http://www.kikah.com/indexarabic.asp?fname=kikaharabic\live\k4\2009-02-10\42.txt&storytitle=
17. ^ http://www.ibs.it/code/9788864430355/haddad-joumana/ritorno-lilith.html
18. ^ http://www.bokia.se/bok/9789186307103/lilits-aterkomst-joumana-haddad/
19. ^ http://vasorotoediciones.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post.html
20. ^ http://www.lecomptoirdiff.com/archives/item/65-haddad-/-miroirs-des-passantes
21. ^ http://www.laie.es/libro/las-siete-vidas-de-luca/701498/978-84-15168-10-2
22. ^ http://vasorotoediciones.blogspot.com/2011/08/vaso-roto-ediciones-umbrales-titulo-los.html

External links[link]

• Her website
• [3]
• The official website of JASAD magazine
• Interview with Joumana Haddad: "Eroticism is the Pulse of Life"
• Rawafed