Reading Groups

Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives with Shirley Tung

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5 Sessions Saturdays, 11:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT April 18 to June 27, 2026

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Books’ option includes a copy of Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives at a 10% discount from our Bookstore. PDF excerpts from all other texts will be provided by the instructor.

Meeting Dates:
4/18, 5/16, 5/30, 6/13, 6/27
Online via Zoom

In Book of Lives, Margaret Atwood turns her incisive narrative voice inward, offering a memoir that resists the conventions of linear life-writing. Rather than presenting a single, authoritative account of her life, Atwood assembles a constellation of fragments, anecdotes, and reflections that trace the many “lives” she has lived as a writer, a daughter, a partner, and a cultural critic. Moving between memory, literary history, and socio-political contexts, Atwood’s memoir asks a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to tell a story about the self?

This reading group places Book of Lives in conversation with selected extracts from the works Atwood reflects upon throughout her memoir, including Cat’s Eye, The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Alias Grace, and her recent auto-fictional short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood. Reading these texts alongside the autobiographical moments that inspired them, we will examine how lived experience migrates into fiction, how historical and personal trauma are transformed by narrative form, and how meaning changes when a work is revisited through the lens of retrospection.

How is memory filtered through craft and authorial voice? If the act of narration inevitably turns fact into fiction, how does writing a memoir complicate any claim to authenticity? Is the self coherent and continuous, or merely an assemblage of overlapping, provisional narratives? Atwood’s Book of Lives prompts us to interrogate the uneasy boundary between truth and invention. In doing so, it asks what stories can and cannot tell us about life, and why we are compelled to tell—or read—them anyway.

Reading List:

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts

The following excerpts will be provided by the instructor:

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read Chapters 1-10 of Book of Lives in advance of the first meeting. PDF excerpts from all other texts will be provided by the instructor before the first meeting.

What to expect from this reading group: Sessions will begin with a contextual mini-lecture, followed by a conversation opener. Although the facilitator will have passages on hand to illustrate the key concepts and to guide the discussion, participants are expected to shape the course of the conversation.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable. Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Shirley F. Tung

Shirley F. Tung

Shirley F. Tung is a University Outstanding Scholar and an Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University. Dr. Tung specializes in the literature and culture of the Restoration and long eighteenth century, and her scholarly work has been published in several top-tier academic journals such as European Romantic Review, Huntington Library Quarterly, and Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. At Kansas State, she teaches courses that range from medieval to modernist literature as well as classes on film and television. Her teaching has received the awards at the international, national, and collegiate levels from the British and American Societies for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Kansas State’s College of Arts and Sciences, and the Student Association of Graduates in English. Currently, Dr. Tung is completing two books: a micro-biography on John Milton’s time as a pamphleteer during the English Civil War and a braided biography of three influential eighteenth-century women travel writers.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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