The Canadian author didn't need to publish any new fiction to make news in 2018. "The Handmaid's Tale," released more than 30 years ago and dramatized in an acclaimed Hulu series, continued to rank with George Orwell's "1984" as a defining dystopian text for the current time. Questions from readers about the imagined country of Gilead, a brutal patriarchy that didn't seem very fictional, were so persistent that Atwood finally changed her mind about writing a sequel and announced that "The Testaments" would come out in 2019.
FILE - In this Oct. 14, 2018 file photo, Margaret Atwood arrives at the 16th Annual Hammer Museum Gala in the Garden in Los Angeles. Atwood is writing a sequel to her million-selling “The Handmaid’s Tale.” “The Testaments” will be published next September by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, the publisher announced Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
