The Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-06-08, Page 1The
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Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Laura Broadley/Goderich Signal Sta
Margaret Atwood signed books for fans after reading from her short fiction collection, Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales at the Blyth
Festival theatre on June 2 as a part of the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story.
Atwood kicks
off Alice
Munro Festival
Laura Broadley
Goderich Signal Star
With her signature humour
and candidness, Margaret
Atwood took the stage at the
Blyth Festival on June 2, 2016
as a part of the Alice Munro
Festival of the Short Story.
Atwood read a selection
from Revenant, a piece of short
fiction from her 10th collec-
tion, Stone Mattress: Nine
Wicked Tales. It is the story of
three lives intertwined with a
polarization main character.
Dancing Girls was Atwood's
first collection, which was
published in 1977 when she
was 38 -years -old. By that time
she was already established in
the publishing world having
10 collections of poetry and
three novels on the shelves.
Atwood was joined on the
Blyth stage by Merilyn
Simonds, another celebrated
Canadian author. The two
women met 20 years ago on
stage at a similar event in
Vancouver.
Simonds started off by ask-
ing Atwood why she decided
to publish a collection of short
fiction in 1977 when she was
already established in so
many other genres.
"I started with stories,"
Atwood said. "I've been writ-
ing stories since high school."
Most publishers wanted a
novel written and published
before they would consider
investing in a collection of short
fiction. Some of the stories in
Dancing Girls had been written
long before the collection was
published, Atwood said.
The short story was a pop-
ular genre in Canada in the
1960s because it was hard to
get novels published unless
the publisher was able to get
a UK or US company to co -
publish. At that time the pub-
lishing houses couldn't justify
the expense without a foreign
partner because Canadian
audiences weren't seen as
able to support the collection
on its own, Atwood said.
Atwood said she credits
the CBC Radio show Anthol-
ogy hosted by Robert Weaver
as helping short fiction and
poetry gain a wider audience
in Canada because he would
read them on air.
"Robert Weaver knew all
the writers in Canada. He
was the common link that
joined writers across the
country," Atwood said.
Alice Munro has also
given Weaver a lot of credit
as he was one of the first to
publish her stories.
Simonds asked Atwood
what the difference between
short pieces, short stories
and tales as those are the
various names of the works
in Atwood's collections.
Short pieces are not neces-
sarily prose, but can take the
form of short plays or narra-
tions. Short stories are realistic
pieces of fiction whereas tales
have a "fable dimension" to
them, Atwood explained.
In the early 1970s Atwood
and Munro were both gaining
a significant following for their
work among Canadians.
After World War Two most
of the preeminent writers
were men. The end of the
1950s and the beginning of
the 1960s saw the emergence
of more female writers like
Lucy Maud Montgomery
and Gabrielle Roy for
Atwood and Munro to look
up to.
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