I would like to tell you a story about surfing the web in the wee hours, while rubbing my nose where my glasses have dug in their little prints. Then suddenly, I happen upon Margaret Atwood's web page. I'm transfixed. Elated. In my story, I would gulp it all in gratefully, like steaming coffee in the cold, then speed on to my 20-page term paper obstacle course till morning, completely revived thanks to the site.

Unfortunately, it's been so long since I discovered the website that I really don't remember stumbling upon it -- probably some inglorious method like Yahoo. Since I really started surfing the web, I've been visiting Margaret Atwood's website regularly to drink in the transcriptions of her hard-to-find speeches, talks, and interviews. Certainly not to see spiffy graphics, revolving full-color photos, or innovative page design. This easy-to-navigate website looks like nothing more inventive than a book, complete with a table of contents. (There is a multi-frame version of the site, but I find it annoying.) You won't find arty flourishes here beyond the orange "new" flags. But it's a fair trade-off - there are no advertisements.

While providing necessary and pertinent facts about Margaret Atwood's life and works - her education and teaching jobs, a bio on her husband novelist Graeme Gibson, and her heady list of awards (14 honorary degrees, the most recent from Oxford!) - this website's heart is the occasional articles. In the wonderful memoir Various Gardens, Atwood the icon comes to life as a feast or famine gardener (more often famine), battling it out with procrastination, lost diagrams, and hungry squirrels. She documents her gardening experiences from her childhood fascination with scarlet runner beans to her latest bulb catalogue infatuation. Anyone with more gardening aspirations than dedication will recognize the African violets wilting on the windowsill or the weeds lovingly renamed "native wildflowers."

While the garden memoir is relatively recent (or at least, I've just discovered it), there are articles I come back to again and again, mostly in the dismal hours when, poised over the keyboard or notebook, I am aching to write and nothing is coming out. I often visit for an infusion of Atwood's "On Writing Poetry," a speech given in Wales in 1995. As a writer in that uncomfortable chasm between having made the giddy decision to pursue the dream and the first book that will vindicate my time and effort to family, friends, and myself, I greedily devour the pre-publication stories of the writers I love - as if reading about the early angst of the successful will make my own less agonizing. Atwood's story proves to be what the doctor ordered and more. In this tongue-in-cheek autobiography, Atwood recounts her own background as not particularly literary - that is, until the "invisible thumb" of poetry marked her at the ripe old age of sixteen. But though she did publish at an age early enough to make most of us cringe, she was not an overnight sensation. After she self-published her first pamphlet of poems, Double Persephone, she worked, struggled, tried on different lifestyles to see if they'd allow her time to write, accumulated rejection slips, and gave readings in an intimate poetry scene. (Sound familiar?) Another of these writerly bildungsromans called "Writing Susanna" focuses on her poetry collection, The Journals of Susanna Moodie.

The Contents page lists a welcome from Atwood and her secretary, Life and Times (where you'll find all those awards, the bio, and one solitary photo), On Writing, Books by Atwood, and Books about Atwood. Most of the things I find worth clicking on are housed under On Writing. "The Road to Publication" details the pothole-pocked street from the writer to the ideal reader with the wry humor I appreciate in her novels, ending with the quotable "May the Fierce be with you." Recent lectures on madness and villainesses, a Q & A in which she describes how grading papers made her take up smoking and forget grammar (what teacher can't relate?), and some recent reviews round out the section. Books by Atwood boasts a host of information on real-life Grace Marks for Alias Grace fans as well as the expected bibliography of works. Finally, anyone interested in the author's official stance on the two recent unofficial biographies should look under Books about Atwood.

While I am a die-hard Atwood fan, much of my interest has revolved around academia. Since my undergrad seminar where we discussed all of Atwood's novels from The Edible Woman to The Robber Bride, I've read most of the rest of her work, even writing two critical essays on Alias Grace in the last year. You'd think that with such an academic bent, I'd happily take advantage of the two bibliographies of criticism listed on the site. Honestly, when researching Atwood, I often forgot those bibliographies were there; on closer inspection I can see why. The online bibliography provided by the Atwood Society, the larger of the two, seems pretty substantial, but actually only includes books. If, like me, you find yourself jostling to write on Atwood's recent work, the annual bibliography provided in the Atwood Newsletter published by the MLA-affiliated Atwood Society is much more convenient, as it includes essays. (When MLA and periodical searches are exhausted, the Atwood's Society discussion list can act as a resource for specific questions, but don't ask general questions, as often no one on this low-volume listserv will answer. In fact, too many of the messages are from high schoolers and undergrads trying to pawn off their prompts on Atwood devotees. Okay, so I'm a bit bitter.) Those interested in scholarly approaches to Atwood are better served by The Atwood Society Margaret Atwood Information Site and/or the Atwood Society webpage.

I love this website and recommend it for your own late-night online pilgrimage.