Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood's reputation as a poet, novelist, critic, essayist, short story writer and social historian has been established through more than 60 works, and translated into more than 20 languages. The Canadian author's books include Cat's Eye, The Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. Themes of feminism, environmentalism and political activism are prominent in Atwoods work. Her new novel, The Year of the Flood, follows a group of characters that call themselves "God's Gardeners," which Atwood introduced in her earlier novel Oryx and Crake. The novel draws on science fiction, dystopian writings, homeopathic medicine and classical epic. To celebrate this wide-ranging project, Orville Stoeber composed music to accompany the hymns of Gods Gardeners, which appear throughout the book. On October 6, 2009, Margaret Atwood visited the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, to read from "The Year of the Flood" and perform hymns with Orville Stoeber.