Margaret Atwood advocates funding for the arts, talks new novel on campus
By Sammy Gibbons | Apr. 4, 2017Award-winning author Margaret Atwood visited UW-Madison Monday to discuss reinventing a classic story, and to give her Canadian perspective on national funding for the arts. Atwood began with a quip about the U.S administration, and said sarcastically she was “so happy she was able to cross the border.” She later criticized recent executive orders to cut funding from the National Endowment of the Arts. “Defunding the arts is particularly disadvantageous to smaller communities, many of which have now built up an economy of sorts around things like music and theater ... as those go, there’s going to be a big hole in the economy,” Atwood said, in the talk, which was hosted by the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities along with other organizations . The Canadian author’s latest novel is a revitalization of William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” in a more modern, technical setting. Atwood explained the use of technology in the book, “Hag-Seed,” to a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Varsity Hall.
