Margaret Atwood on literary Los Angeles and writing serially [video]

Behind the scenes at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, book critic David Ulin talked to Margaret Atwood about Los Angeles, literature and what it’s like to write a serial novel. Atwood, who had been awarded the Innovators Prize at the L.A. Times book awards Friday night, spoke to a full crowd at the festival on Saturday.

“For years it was thought of as really a movie town and people didn’t read,� Atwood said of Los Angeles. “You heard that all the time, but it turns out not to have been true.�

Ulin asked Atwood about some of her favorite Los Angeles-based writers; she cited Nathanael West, Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler. Each of them appears on our new interactive map of literary L.A.

Atwood has created a serial novel for Byliner, “Positron,� which she is writing in real time. Like many other authors, she says an inspiration is the way Charles Dickens published his books, along with a less-expected model: daytime soap operas.

To get the full story from Margaret Atwood, watch the video above.

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