Margaret Atwood's relation to biography and autobiography has been the subject of much controversy. Like many writers, she steadfastly resists attempts to read her works as simple reflections of personal experiences; they are, as she constantly reminds her readers, artistic creations that may draw upon but not be reduced to observed experience. Another Canadian writer, Alice Munro, put the case memorably when she observed that writers often use a bit of starter dough from the real world, but the cake that rises from the pan is, of course, another confection altogether. This chapter will not, therefore, consist of any such attempt to read Atwood's works biographically, as fictionalized autobiography. Instead, it will ponder representations of Atwood and her career, and it will use the notion of literary celebrity to do so.

There is no doubt that Atwood is the one Canadian writer who can, most unequivocally, be called a literary celebrity, and this chapter will assess not only how she has been represented as such, but how she has intervened as an active, canny agent to shape the discourses surrounding her celebrity. It may, at first glance, seem out of proportion to call any writer a celebrity, given the sort of attention that Hollywood A-list stars attract, but theorists of celebrity see it as a phenomenon that reaches across cultural institutions. As Christine Gledhill writes, the star “crosses disciplinary boundaries.”