Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is one of the world’s most renowned and prolific writers of fiction, poetry and essays. She is best known for a series of darkly visionary novels - The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, and The MaddAddam Trilogy - which tunnel into the darkest possibilities of what humans can do. Simon meets Margaret in Toronto at a time when the rights of women and the fate of the planet, ever-present concerns in her work, are at the forefront of many of our minds. Atwood gives her take on the seismic ruling of the United States Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs Wade, and the consequences it will have on women’s rights in America. She reflects on how, in her view, the ruling was a long time coming, with the rise over decades of the evangelical Christian right wing, the very same movement that inspired her to write her iconic novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a book that has taken on even more relevance in our fractured times. Atwood explains the inspira