--- title: Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival | TIME description: Authors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future. canonical: https://time.com/video/UjX1uH2k/ og:title: Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival og:description: Authors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future. og:url: https://time.com/video/UjX1uH2k/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UjX1uH2k/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival twitter:description: Authors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UjX1uH2k/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * World # Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival [Watch (HLS stream): Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff on Writing About Women in Moments of Survival](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UjX1uH2k.m3u8) (17:50)  _Published 2024-04-24. Authors Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff agree: it can be more effective to write truthfully about the contemporary world by situating stories in the past or in the future._ --- Apr 29, 2024 2:38 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Margaret Atwood | TIME100 Talks](/video/Gq1HSUlz/) ### Margaret Atwood | TIME100 Talks [Margaret Atwood on the Sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale"](/video/1tvontko/) ### Margaret Atwood on the Sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale" [Margaret Atwood and Elisabeth Moss Discuss The Handmaid’s Tale](/video/QAJVeTx0/) ### Margaret Atwood and Elisabeth Moss Discuss The Handmaid’s Tale --- ## Transcript Hello, we're here to talk about some very cheery topic. So I wanted to start out by talking about some similarities in the writing that you two have done Margaret. You said that you can see the handmaid's tale when you were thinking about it. You were thinking back to an America where women had very few rights specifically the 17th century in New England a little bit about what interested you about that. And time. I done some research when I was in an undergrad situation on early American captivity narratives by women, which are these wild survivalist texts that were actually used by preachers to justify colonization, and they're really interesting. They're interesting in and of themselves, but they're also interesting in the 21st century way because if we receive it soon as the vastness of time in the way that opinions have changed and the way the stories were told for a purpose. So I was interested in that and then I was interested also in rethinking the way that humans and nature and God have been in conversation maybe be emphasizing the human aspect and trying to see what it would look like if my protagonist went through nature and started to lose lization and Nature's would have came up to to be is parallel to her so that she wasn't sort of at the top of the hierarchy she was sort of equal to meet her at the end deserve. It was in an active. Maybe he called ization over the course of the book. Yeah, well and that's Sergeant literally backstage just now we were talking about nature and Margaret. I did not know that you were once a camp counselor that specifically focused on nature and degree tells little before you were born in 58. I was hired to start the nature program at a small reform Jewish summer camp in Canada. Why me I was the only person that they can get their hands on a new anything about nature and one of my ask a said to me recently. I hated nature conservation program in Africa. So maybe some of it rubbed off so I was promised that I would have a little lab built for me and that didn't happen. I ran my nature program out of a tool shed and we went on from there. Oh, so yes, why maybe because I grew up with the biologists. I know their ways. I'm not afraid of snakes snakes. Whatever. You have to tell them your nickname, which is Peggy nature. Yes. We were very cold after our specialty. So there was back arts and crafts Barrel horses and I was begging nature just the other day. I was waiting in the lobby and I retired looking man came up to me and said are you Peggy nature? So I'm curious you both have written about as we are told by both the pastor wyles in the handmaid's tale and other works of yours are stories about women in moments of survival. Those two particular novels are don't take place in our contemporary times. What is it about drawing from historical knowledge of stories of women in survival that resonates with us today think Margaret. Well as it is currently a writer is problem which has that present times are moving so quickly. It's hard to get a point of fixation. So as soon as you're right about something in the present-day, it's all changed or some of it has but I was interested in the seventeenth Century Puritan New England partly because they're my folks. So I want to say bad things about them. Whereas there's not there people that said bad things about them. Yes, but I I know them and I studied them as well before you were born in the early sixties with a man called perry-miller to whom the book is partly dedicated who brought American studies into the academy in a minute other person called that phone Matheson did that before that? Nobody studied American literature and civilization and especially not in the 17th century. They might have started maybe wet men Moby Dick, but but not the 17th century. And learn what appealed about it to you. I mean, you've also spoken about being put off by writing a book work Twitter and and smart phones are due its lands right in in historical fiction. Is this amazing way to do that? You didn't you can speak metaphorically about the time that you're actually in every book is of the time that you're actually right even if you put it into the future even if you put it into the past, but I was really interested in looking at the survivalist tell us because they tend to be masculine Pride. If you look at the Western the Western is really like hyper-masculine as a form if you look at other survivalist Tales, he didn't, you know, Gary Paulsen Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain which of these things obsessively as it as a girl the person at the sender is Ismail and I just wanted to flip that I wanted to see what it would be like to have a female body in nature. Responding to Nature inside and turning the idea of Man vs nature into something maybe a little different little more. So speaking of books that speak to our time Margaret. I'm sure you're sick of telling us all I Told You So it comes to the repeal of row and ends just received assault on women's rights that has happened over the past several decades really was it frustrating to have a handmaid's tale dismissed as an impossible future for someone. I know it wasn't dismissed everywhere. It was it had several reactions one was in England where they did their 17th century Puritan absolutism in the 70s. I said that already and they said jolly good yarn. Matt. Margaret was such an imagination. Ho ho in the eastern part of Dan in Canada that has to nervously couldn't happen here because they're always quite nervous Canadians and nervous people. Will you can see why to the north of them is Russia and the United States. You never know what they're going to do. In the states one reaction was don't be silly where the world's brightest liberal democracy. We would never do such a thing. Never never never and the other reaction coming from the West Coast was how long of we got so it was a split in the series as the civilizations can never start from zero. They always even if they changed the name change the statues change the flags czarist Russia of end up with Stalin and look what's happened now because they didn't have a tradition of liberal democracy at all. They had an absolute estate China had an astonishing bureaucracy. And now it has an astonishing bureaucracy United States, but only part of it because it's very diverse and its point of origin and its foundational beliefs the part. I was writing about began as a Puritan theocracy. Gets thrown out gets the quotes Enlightenment gottstein Revolution, but that. Pianka sea is always underneath waiting to reassert itself. So the question I ask myself as a United States were to become a totalitarianism. What kind of totalitarianism wouldn't become and we're beginning to see the answer to that and some people can hardly wait to get rid of democracy and set up a Puritan theocracy. So speaking of differing States different views and receptions two books Lauren you are eminently about to open a bookstore in Florida and gay and I told this Dad I'm sure you're much more person this and I am but as of last September 40% of the book restrictions in the US occurred in Florida, so you are focusing very much on the topic of banned books right now. So why did you feel is important to open the store? And how is that a means of fighting back against book Banning yet? So it my husband and I are Partners in this and we've been watching this happen slowly. I mean over the course of a few years until I got a r c i mean that's what's for dinner. Expression and we were feeling frustrated about what to do about it. I do it there's this amazing quote by the German poet. I know they kind of who wrote in 1820s 1829. I think in places where people burn books they will one day burn people and I believe that is to be true great. I think that banning books is the first step to burning them and and it's a now a very very Swift slide into Banning books. We have a thousand more books challenge band in Florida than the next stage, which is Texas and is increasing every single day. So, you know, we wanted to be a lighthouse we wanted to sort of spread of freedom of expression. We wanted to stand in the middle. We are literally in the middle of the same in Gainesville, Florida in the swamp, and we wanted to show that we're watching right we are here I'm the people whose whose voices are being erased. They matter they need to see themselves in media. They they they are the State of Florida doesn't seem to Value them. But we value them we think that they're important and they needs it to be heard and they need them to see themselves reflected in the books. So we're very passionate about this just looks terrible. We are going to be pushing. These books were going to be trying to get them into the hands of as many people as possible. We're going to be inviting as many people are comfortable coming to Florida did Shih Tzu talk. So I don't know if we have this whole band Book section and the handmaid's tales like some smack that at least start as a beacon and then let the light sort of shine into the other parts of Florida. but of course. We're not alone Mitchell Kaplan at Books & Books in Judy Blume also books and books and we're working really hard together to make this. So when do you say book wedding you made it to schools and libraries closed and libras, but it says it's not just chill that's happening to the books that are actually actively being chanted a band but we don't track is that the teachers and the Librarians course terrified of putting books out. I have a friend who is a fifth-grade teacher and she used to teach the Holocaust by teaching art spiegelman's Maus great book and she does not feel comfortable putting that out because she is afraid that their parents are going to come in and get her job and they could mow Center. I thought it was I thought his history. Well it is but but if you add the word naked than you've got an excuse It's You There are there naked SS man in here in a certain County in Florida. The dictionary was banned because it has the word sex in it, which is amazing. You're going to be extinct every day. So we all know that they have sex in ways. I come out in very public and embarrassing ways all do you need to do a list called too hot to read more into hot to read and you got the number one will be the Bible because of the Song of Solomon. Oh, no, not just that. There's so much murder and sex on route. Yeah, and Canadian of my generation. I know it. Well, we never got those parts in school, but we found them. Well, it's on the rooftop me to tell you which part I was going to wrap up about asking about the impact of bucks. But I think we've learned a little about the impact of books can have on our lives. But Margaret the handmaid's tale especially has been Central to protests around women's rights in the last couple years the imagery from it and I'm curious do you feel like the book has helped enact some change or at least in conversation without a doubt and that I hear from people from various countries in the world. I will mention Argentina and as for Dustin cake off, but every time you got one of those changes you got to push back against of its it's inevitable. The reason the imagery has been so widely deployed. We live in an age of Television the internet very visual YouTube all of these things their visual if we were still in the age of radio, he wouldn't be saying that phenomenon at all I do is because you can look at them image and make an instant connection and this was kicked off in the United States in Texas. So some women were going to go into the legislative chamber where there were a lot of non female people in dark suits enacting legislation about women's bodies about which they appeared to know very little and they wanted to do a protest but they know they would be kicked out if they were vocal or naked so they decided to put on these outfits and they ordered some long robes red which one they arrived were pink. This was not the message that you wished to convey. So they made the red ones very quickly themselves. You can't be kicked out because you're silent. And you can't be expelled for a modest dress because you're very covered up and the television camera says you instantly so I think that's why it became so useful in a lot of situations. Well, I want to thank you both so much for the work that you're doing to not only put incredibly moving and impactful stories out in the world, but helped create real world to change as well. 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