Tennessean, Oct. 18

Margaret Atwood still has the country western top with embroidered flowers that she received from the “Grand Ole Opry” when she visited Nashville a few years back.

It’s an unusual fashion statement in her hometown of Toronto — even though she tries to pair it tastefully with black jeans.

“Heads turn,” the renowned Canadian author said with a laugh.

Then again, attention is something with which Atwood is well accustomed.

Perhaps best known as the Booker Prize-winning author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Blind Assassin,” Atwood is recognized as a feminist, an environmentalist and a woman with an imagination warped enough to envision off-putting futures that may not be too far from the twisted truth.

Whether writing about a waterless flood or a genetic apocalypse, Atwood’s derisive humor and intelligence have earned her an esteemed reputation worldwide.

Later this month, it’s Music City’s turn to bestow an honor as Atwood is recognized as the 2012 Nashville Public Library Literary Award recipient. She joins past honorees such as John Updike, Ann Patchett and John Irving.

Leading up to the award gala on Saturday, the author’s book “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been selected as the “Nashville Reads” initiative. People across the city are encouraged to read the book and participate in community-led discussions surrounding its themes.

“She’s just at the top of so many people’s list of amazing authors,” said Teri Hughes, president of the Nashville Library Foundation. “She’s just the real deal.”

A creative outlet

“Nomadic” has been used to describe Atwood’s upbringing, and it fits.

Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec and Toronto. As a young girl, she spent most of her time in the woods. There was no electricity, no running water, no grocery. Her family filled the kitchen mostly with food from the garden, fish from the lake and canned goods.

“Spam tastes much better when you are eating it in the woods,” she quipped.

The setting inspired literacy — if only because it lacked traditional entertainment like movie theaters and televisions. She was left to play with her older brother, who liked to line up her dolls to fight, and to read.

“I wanted to read so I could read the funny papers by myself,” she said.

Interestingly, comic books were an early creative outlet for Atwood. She conjured worlds conquered by the fantastical, just as many children root their fantasies in far-away lands of wizards and talking animals.

That connection with myth, which Atwood believes proliferates deep within the human psyche, eventually manifested in the speculative fiction she now writes.

She long has moved people away from the idea that her work is science fiction. Raised in a family of scientists, Atwood’s work doesn’t feature blue aliens or spaceships. Instead, she sets her stories in real places where technology’s power, and the people wielding that power, create unusual futures.

Champion of libraries

Atwood is the author of more than 50 volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction and nonfiction, including her most recent novel, “The Year of the Flood.” A small sampling of awards include the Giller Prize, Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year, and the Booker Prize. She holds honorary degrees from several universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.

And her interests are as varied as her work and recognition.

In an interview more than two decades ago, Atwood listed her interests as bird watching, the ecology movement and writers in prison. More recently it was solar fabrics and algae walls.

Conversation with Atwood easily swings to marine conservation and a short speech on the importance of blue green algae. Without it in the water, she says, “we will stop breathing. It’s that simple.” Right now she is reading “Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants” by Richard Mabey. It offers the origins of Kentucky bluegrass and even unveils which weeds are safe to eat, Atwood said.

And then, there’s libraries.

Last July, Atwood emerged as a crusader against cuts to public libraries, using Twitter to weigh in on the budget debate in Toronto. She tweeted a link to a petition against the public closing of library branches, which was one of a set of proposed cost-cutting measures. Even as technology changes how and what we read, libraries, Atwood said, remain vital. They provide an educational resource for every societal demographic.

“It’s a very democratic thing, a library system, because it allows people without a lot of disposable cash to have the same access as others,” Atwood said.

“There’s a hunger for it,” she added, saying a good library system adds “measurably to a community’s health.”

In Nashville, Atwood’s appearance will continue her mission.

“I think having Margaret Atwood come to Nashville is a real coup,” said Teri Hughes. It shows a writer of such great stature is willing to come talk about her work and share with our really creative city her creative process.”

And though Atwood doesn’t believe her “Opry” attire is appropriate to wear to the gala event, one never knows what other country flair she may inject.

At a Nashville appearance several years back, she opened her speech by singing the first verse of Hank Williams’ tune “Why Don’t You Love Me?”

It was reminiscent of the “Grand Ole Opry” radio shows she listened to as a girl. She liked those songs, because they were “not just mood music, they had plots and stories.”

They turned her head, captured her ear and perhaps helped poise her pen — maybe even playing a part in the writer she is today.