Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson – författare

Margaret Atwood offers an immensely influential voice in contemporary literature. Her novels have been translated into over 22 languages and are widely studied, taught and enjoyed. Her style is defined by her comic wit and willingness to experiment. Her work has ranged across several genres, from poetry to literary and cultural criticism, novels, short stories and art. This Introduction summarizes Atwood's canon, from her earliest poetry and her first novel, The Edible Woman, through The Handmaid's Tale to The Year of the Flood. Covering the full range of her work, it guides students through multiple readings of her oeuvre. It features chapters on her life and career, her literary, Canadian and feminist contexts, and how her work has been received and debated over the course of her career. With a guide to further reading and a clear, well organised structure, this book presents an engaging overview for students and readers.

Margaret Atwood offers an immensely influential voice in contemporary literature. Her novels have been translated into over 22 languages and are widely studied, taught and enjoyed. Her style is defined by her comic wit and willingness to experiment. Her work has ranged across several genres, from poetry to literary and cultural criticism, novels, short stories and art. This Introduction summarizes Atwood's canon, from her earliest poetry and her first novel, The Edible Woman, through The Handmaid's Tale to The Year of the Flood. Covering the full range of her work, it guides students through multiple readings of her oeuvre. It features chapters on her life and career, her literary, Canadian and feminist contexts, and how her work has been received and debated over the course of her career. With a guide to further reading and a clear, well organised structure, this book presents an engaging overview for students and readers.

Transatlantic Women's Literature is a valuable contribution to the evolving debate surrounding Transatlantic Studies and transatlantic literature. Its originality and importance lie in its focus on 20th century women's narratives of travel and adventure, and its deliberate expansion of the Transatlantic concept beyond the familiar US-UK axis to include Canada, South America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. The crisscrossing of the Atlantic is contested and problematised throughout. The book explores culturally resonant literature that imagines "views from both sides" and examines the imaginary, "in-between" space of the Atlantic. It offers a considered exploration of the way in which the space of the Atlantic-and women's space-work together in the construction of meaning in transatlantic texts.Focusing on contemporary literature, this book engages with a range of genres, from novellas and novels to essays, memoirs, and travel literature. Nella Larsen's Quicksand is read alongside Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine in relation to constructions of the exotic; Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation is explored in relation to memoirs of travel such as Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica and Stranger on a Train; and Anne Tyler's transatlantic novel The Accidental Tourist is read alongside her latest transpacific novel, Digging to America as well as Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune. Readers will gain an appreciation of the complexity of the transatlantic narrative and the ways in which these narratives are defined by and infused with gender considerations.

In the first edition of Transatlantic Studies, Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson and Will Kaufman argued that a new field of studies was emerging from the separate fields of insular area studies such as American Studies, European Studies, and African Studies. Now that Transatlantic Studies is a recognized area of inquiry in its own right, Macpherson and Kaufman extend their analysis of it. New Perspectives in Transatlantic Studies aims to extend the definition of Transatlantic Studies and explore the implications of such a definition by supplying a critical perspective, which links the diverse constituents of this interdisciplinary field. Therefore, it engages with issues of "the contact zone" in relation to globalization, migration, and the law; examines transatlantic artistic and cultural representation; and explores the economic, philosophic, and political implications of the transatlantic area.

Women’s Movement critically explores the transgressive potential of feminist escape narratives and argues that they are, almost by definition, radically different from paradigmatic male escape narratives. While definitions of escape are necessarily broad, they have too often excluded the ambiguous escape – the escape most closely associated with the female. Indeed, feminist escape narratives often resist a happy ending, and Women’s Movement argues that these narrative closures reflect the changing face of feminism, as it sheds its old certainties, is faced with a monumental “backlash” and is refigured as the potentially less threatening “postfeminism”.Resisting the automatic association of “escape” with “escapist,” Women’s Movement analyzes male adventure and quest narratives, including Moby-Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Blood Meridian, and Deliverance, before turning to a range of feminist texts. While being the first book to give critical attention to some postfeminist novels, Women’s Movement more often acts as a channel for offering different ways of approaching familiar feminist texts, including, among others, Marian Engel’s Bear, Atwood’s Surfacing and The Handmaid’s Tale, Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground and Dancing in the Dark, Anne Tyler’s Earthly Possessions and Ladder of Years, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.