Margaret Atwood's first memoir, Book of Lives, to be published in November 2025

CBC

11-02-2025

Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood is finally sharing her life's story in the long-awaited Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts.
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts will be published by McClelland & Stewart on Nov. 4, 2025 in Canada. Doubleday and Chatto & Windus will publish the book in the U.S., and the U.K., respectively.
Atwood, 85, the author of The Handmaid's Tale and two-time Booker Prize winner, described the challenges of writing her memoir in a press statement.
"I sweated blood over this book — there was too much life to stuff in, and if I'd died at 25 like John Keats, it could have been shorter — but I also laughed a lot," she wrote.
"A memoir is what you can remember, and you remember mostly stupid things, catastrophes, revenges, and times of political horror, so I put those in — but I also added moments of joy, and surprising events and, of course, the books. I hope you'll have as much fun reading Book of Lives as I did writing it."
85 surprising facts about Margaret Atwood
Atwood is a celebrated writer who has published fiction, nonfiction, poetry and comics. She began her writing career with poetry, publishing The Circle Game and winning the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in the late 1960s.
She's since published more than a dozen poetry collections, including The Journals of Susanna Moodie in 1970, Power Politics in 1971 and, most recently, Paper Boat in 2024.
She has won several awards for her work including the Governor General's Literary Award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Writer in the World Prize.
In Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, she recounts her early life with her entomologist father and dietician mother, who spent most of the year in the forest in Northern Quebec, her rise to literary stardom and the defining cultural and political moments that shape her writing. Through her stories, readers will notice the connections between art and real life and get insight into the mind of one of Canada's most celebrated writers.