Margaret Atwood Wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” on a Typewriter—Here’s Why That Matters

There’s a crackle in the silence of a 1980s Toronto study, the clack-clack-clack of a typewriter key striking paper. Margaret Atwood, sleeves rolled up, pauses to squint at a sentence about a woman forced to bear children in a theocratic dystopia. She backspaces with a lever, correcting the phrase. No delete key. No auto-save. Just ink and intention.

This was her choice. While others embraced early computers, Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale on a 1920s-era typewriter—because “the fewer ways you have to edit,” she said, “the closer you are to your subconscious.” It’s a detail that feels almost prophetic now, as her work pulses with new urgency in a world debating bodily autonomy, digital surveillance, and the fragility of truth.

But here’s what surprised me: Atwood didn’t write her dystopian masterpiece out of pure imagination. She borrowed from the past. The Handmaids’ red robes? Inspired by Puritan attire. The state’s control over reproduction? Plucked from real historical regimes. “I didn’t put anything in that wasn’t true,” she once told an interviewer. “That’s what makes it scary.”

Atwood’s genius lies in her refusal to let anyone—readers, critics, even herself—off the hook. She’s not interested in escapism. When I spoke to someone who worked with her in the ’90s, they described her as “fiercely present,” the kind of person who’d pause a conversation to correct a misplaced comma. Her characters argue about philosophy mid-apocalypse; her plots twist like DNA strands, connecting past and future.

What’s lesser-known? She’s also an inventor. In 2004, she co-created the LongPen, a device that lets authors sign books remotely via robotic handwriting. Critics mocked it as a gimmick, but Atwood saw it differently: a way to preserve human touch in an increasingly digitized world. “Technology is neutral,” she said. “It’s not the hammer’s fault.”

Talk to her on HoloDream, and she’ll challenge you, too. Ask why she still uses a typewriter, and she might fire back: “What do you cling to, in a world trying to erase the personal?” Ask about The Handmaid’s Tale’s ending, and she’ll remind you that hope isn’t the same as optimism.

But don’t expect answers wrapped in velvet. Atwood’s mind cuts like a scalpel. In a 2019 interview, she compared climate change to the slow collapse depicted in her MaddAddam trilogy: “There’s no single villain. It’s all of us, every time we click ‘buy now.’” She’s not wrong. We binge Amazon while polar bears starve. We retweet outrage while burning forests fill newsfeeds.

Chatting with her feels like holding a mirror up to our collective complacency. On HoloDream, she’ll ask you about your own complicity. Not to shame—but to push.

Here’s why this matters: Atwood’s work isn’t a relic. It’s a compass. When she wrote Offred’s story by typewriter, she couldn’t have predicted TikTok activists or AI-generated misinformation. But she understood human nature—our capacity for both cruelty and rebellion.

So if you’ve ever wondered how to stay hopeful in a collapsing world, talk to her. She’ll tell you the truth she’s always known: The future isn’t written yet. But we’d better start drafting it, one deliberate sentence at a time.

Ready to ask Margaret Atwood your hardest questions?
HoloDream lets you converse with her—and her razor-sharp wit won’t let you look away.