Xandra Bingley’s first job, at the age of eighteen, was as a ‘trainee spy’ for MI5. On moving to the US, she worked at the Buffalo University Poetry Library, annotating Dylan Thomas and Pamela Hansford-Johnson's love letters; at The Atlantic Monthly Review in Boston as a reader, and at the Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard as assistant to the Director. After a brief spell in Ireland she returned to London and moved into the house in Primrose Hill where she lives today. In London she worked at The New Review literary magazine before becoming a publisher’s reader and then commissioning editor at Jonathan Cape. She then started her own literary agency, which she ran for 15 years, representing Ali Smith, Esther Freud, Geoff Dyer and Alasdair Gray amongst many others. Xandra’s wartime childhood memoir Bertie, May and Mrs Fish was published in the UK to great acclaim in 2005.Xandra’s long involvement with writers and publishing have led to many friendships, including with Robert Lowell, John Ashbery and Caroline Blackwood, as well as Margaret Atwood, with whom she has been friends for more than 30 years.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, critical essays, and comics. Her work has been published in more than forty-five countries. Dearly, her first collection of poetry in over a decade, was published in November 2020. Her latest novel, The Testaments, was a co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. Her other works of fiction include Cat’s Eye, finalist for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; and Hag-Seed. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. Her most recent book is The Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. She lives in Toronto.
