How old is Margaret Atwood? Author of 'The Handmaid's Tale' claims its success is "not due to me or the excellence of the book"

Canadian author Margaret Atwood, 85, says she doesn’t credit herself or her writing for the extraordinary and continuing success of her critically acclaimed book The Handmaid’s Tale.

Speaking to CBS News on November 10, 2025, the two-time Booker Prize winner said the novel’s global reach, which includes more than 10 million copies sold, multiple stage adaptations, and an Emmy-winning Hulu series, was more the result of history than personal genius. The author said,

"It’s not due to me or the excellence of the book. It’s partly in the twists and turns of history"

Atwood suggested that The Handmaid’s Tale, first published in 1985, would likely have remained a quiet literary artifact if not for the rollback of reproductive rights and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, events that reignited public interest in her dystopian world.

The author explained that every event in her fiction has a real-world precedent. Across her 64 books, the author said she has maintained one unbending rule,

"If it didn’t happen, somewhere, at some time, it doesn’t make it into my books"

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More about Margaret Atwood's memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts

The author's 60 Minutes interview coincides with the release of Margaret Atwood’s first full-length memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, which revisits the many versions of herself across decades of writing.

In the memoir, published on November 4, 2025, the author reportedly talks about her childhood in the remote wilderness of Quebec, where she was homeschooled until age 12 while her father, an entomologist, studied insects in the field. As reported by CBS News on November 10, 2025, the author wrote,

"Growing up with a biologist makes you particular about details. You’re not saying, ‘That’s a butterfly.’ You’re saying what kind of butterfly"

That careful attention to specificity, she notes, would shape both her language and worldview.

According to some more media reports from November 8, 2025, Book of Lives also works as a dialogue between two selves, described as

"the writer who lives and the woman who writes"

The memoir explores her rise from Peggy Nature, the curious child who learned to canoe and forage in the forest, to M.E. Atwood, the masked young poet who published under her initials to avoid gender bias. Margaret Atwood recalls her studies under theorists Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, her discovery of myth and media, and how researching the Salem witch trials at Harvard planted the seeds for her famous book The Handmaid’s Tale.

A view of Margaret Atwood's unique single-copy “Unburnable” special edition of The Handmaid’s Tale at Sotheby's on June 03, 2022, in New York City. (Image via Getty)

In the memoir, the author also talks about her partnership with the late novelist Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019. Their 50-year life together, reportedly filled with books, beekeeping, and shared solitude, forms one of the memoir’s most moving threads. The author writes,

"Ask yourself, Dear Reader. The busy schedule or the empty chair? I chose the busy schedule. The empty chair would be there when I got home"

Even in her descriptions of grief, Margaret Atwood’s humor seems to remain intact. "I’m still vertical,” she reportedly jokes in her newsletter, describing her ongoing international tour.

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The woman behind The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood’s literary career has often been cast as visionary, but she insists her work is rooted in observation, not foresight. In her CBS News interview, she explained that her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, which talks about environmental collapse and pandemic contagion, was never intended as prophecy. The writer says,

"It wasn’t, ‘This is going to happen without a doubt. It was, ‘This could happen, so be on the watch.’"

Her writing process, grounded in historical fact and human behavior, aims to expose how authoritarianism grows from everyday complacency.

Margaret Atwood, born November 18, 1939, reportedly began The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984 in West Berlin, where she lived within earshot of the Wall. The paranoia and surveillance she observed there informed her vision of Gilead, the theocratic society at the novel’s center. Talking about the time in her memoir, the author writes,

"The overriding of ordinary civil liberties is one of the signposts on the road to dictatorship"

When asked by CBS whether she sees similar dangers in the modern United States, Atwood said, she said that feeling concerned is not incorrect, and that there are "warning lights flashing."

Over the years, Margaret Atwood’s work has also drawn controversy and bans. According to PEN America, her novels have been removed from curricula or libraries in 135 U.S. school districts for various reasons, often related to the contents of her books.

The author said she takes the outrage in stride, saying,

"The right thinks I’m irrelevant. The left thinks I should have preached their sermon. My response involves a finger"

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More about Margaret Atwood's public perception

Despite her reputation as a formidable intellect, Margaret Atwood is known for her generosity toward readers and peers. A Guardian letter from Nov. 7, 2025, recalled a 2000 event at the Smithsonian Institution where the author reportedly “saved” a struggling interviewer by steering their floundering Q&A into a warm, engaging conversation.

Joint winners Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo attend The 2019 Booker Prize Winner Announcement at The Guildhall on October 14, 2019, in London, England. (Image via Getty)

Another letter in The Guardian revealed that The Handmaid’s Tale began in Blakeney, Norfolk, in a damp fisherman’s cottage in 1983. Atwood abandoned her previous novel there before moving to West Berlin, where she finally began the story that would define her career. Locals now joke that the cottage deserves a blue plaque, a small tribute to the birthplace of one of modern literature’s most influential works.

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Today, as she tours her memoir through Toronto, London, and Berlin, Margaret Atwood remains every bit the observer she was as a girl in the woods. She dissects fame, ideology, and aging with the same sharpness she brings to fiction. Book of Lives is not a farewell but, as Margaret Atwood writes, more of a "reclamation" of her memory, her voice, and how her story is told to the world.

Edited by Devangee