‘If you write a book on me’, Margaret Atwood claims, ‘you have to have a chapter on hair’. In an interview with me in Toronto in the summer of 2007, Atwood claimed, ‘I have the hair criticism. I get criticism of the book, criticism of the ascribed personality and then criticism of the hair. That's why you have to have a chapter on hair.’ Early photographs of Atwood do indeed focus on her remarkably curly hair – and underscore the unsurprising truth that female authors battle against a link between their appearance and their critical reception (indeed, several of the critical books on Atwood use her photograph as the front cover). If Atwood's reputation now firmly rests on her output and not her appearance, nevertheless the effects of this early focus on her looks are apparent in her critical and creative output, and show in one small way how biography necessarily has an impact upon a writer's life and her work.

Atwood's famous humour is apparent in this little vignette, as well as a number of important themes in relation to Atwood herself and her place in Canadian and world literature. A literary author's relationship to her texts (and her readers) is a matter of some critical debate, from claims that the author is the font of all knowledge to claims that readers determine meanings and from everything in between, yet fascination with details of an author's life do not seem to abate.