The Booker prize-winning author has signed up to share her writing with an online community of nine million other users
Digital experiment ... Margaret Atwood has joined social-reading website Wattpad to encourage young writers. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters
As of today, there's a new member of the social-reading website Wattpad, alongside the likes of misstwinkletoes, bacutie4eva and xoStardust: the Booker prize-winning author Margaret Atwood.
Atwood has signed up to Wattpad to share her writing with its online community of nine million other users. Describing herself as "a writer since 1956" on her online profile, Atwood has posted two new poems on the website, is planning to share a piece of fiction this autumn and will also be the final judge of a poetry contest to be held in July.
Her work is already finding fans on Wattpad. The poem Update on Werewolves, in which she explores the world of the female werewolf – "Tomorrow they'll be back / in their middle-management black / and Jimmy Choos / with hours they can't account for / and first dates' blood on the stairs" – was met with the accolade: "The second stanza was a total giggle" from one user, and praised with "a change from the usual werewolves I see here" by another. Her poem Thriller Suite also went down well with Wattpad users. "So vivid. Lurid!" wrote Saraleee. Jamilla_ wasn't sure she understood it, but liked it "all the same".
"I didn't think they were going to disapprove," said Atwood. "I've already looked at quite a bit [of writing] on the site but haven't commented yet. I think it would be too crushing for me to comment. Out of millions of users, how am I going to single somebody out? It's enough to judge the poems."
Full story at The Guardian.
Atwood has signed up to Wattpad to share her writing with its online community of nine million other users. Describing herself as "a writer since 1956" on her online profile, Atwood has posted two new poems on the website, is planning to share a piece of fiction this autumn and will also be the final judge of a poetry contest to be held in July.
Her work is already finding fans on Wattpad. The poem Update on Werewolves, in which she explores the world of the female werewolf – "Tomorrow they'll be back / in their middle-management black / and Jimmy Choos / with hours they can't account for / and first dates' blood on the stairs" – was met with the accolade: "The second stanza was a total giggle" from one user, and praised with "a change from the usual werewolves I see here" by another. Her poem Thriller Suite also went down well with Wattpad users. "So vivid. Lurid!" wrote Saraleee. Jamilla_ wasn't sure she understood it, but liked it "all the same".
"I didn't think they were going to disapprove," said Atwood. "I've already looked at quite a bit [of writing] on the site but haven't commented yet. I think it would be too crushing for me to comment. Out of millions of users, how am I going to single somebody out? It's enough to judge the poems."
Full story at The Guardian.