Publisher’s note: Fewer than 50 copies remain of this limited edition, 500-copy printing

Bursting with her inimitable humor, this new essay by internationally renowned novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood recounts three unforgettable birding adventures with her late partner, Graeme Gibson. From shivering in subzero weather on remote Amherst Island, Ontario, to nearly drowning in the mangrove-lined Caroni River in Trinidad, to sloshing through a crocodile-infested swamp near the Bay of Pigs in Cold War-era Cuba, each anecdote surprises with unexpected twists.

Often hilarious and at length deeply moving, this essay reflects Margaret Atwood’s writing at its very best. It stands as a fond and touching reflection on the pastime that she and Graeme — partners for fourty-eight years — shared until the end.

With a beautiful cover illustration by Windsor-based illustrator Julia Hall, only 500 of these hand-bound, limited-edition chapbooks will be published worldwide.

Royalties on all sales are shared with our publishing partner, the Pelee Island Bird Observatory.

About Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the Maddaddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed in 2022 with Burning Questions, a selec-tion of essays from 2004–2021. Her next collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood was published in March 2023. Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, play-wright, and puppeteer. For decades she has been a champion of bird and habitat preservation. With her partner Graeme Gibson, she was honorary president of BirdLife International’s Rare Birds Club, and since Graeme’s death in 2019, she has been an active member and honorary chair of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory Board of Directors. She divides her time between Pelee Island, Oro Township, and Toronto, Canada.