Wilderness Tips

Wilderness Tips
First edition
Author Margaret Atwood
Cover artist Frida Kahlo, The Wounded Deer, 1946
Country Canada
Language English
Genre Short story collection
Publisher McClelland and Stewart
Publication date
1991
Media type Print (hardcover)
ISBN 0-7710-0819-8

Wilderness Tips is a collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood, published in 1991 by McClelland and Stewart. It was a finalist for the Governor General's Award. Certain stories were previously published in The New Yorker, Saturday Night, Playboy, Harper's and Vogue.

Several of the stories are fictionalized portrayals of Atwood's contemporaries in Canadian literature. The mysterious poet Selena in "Isis in Darkness" is based on Gwendolyn MacEwen, and the journalist Marcia in "Hack Wednesday" is based on June Callwood. One story, "Uncles", prompted a feud between Atwood and Robert Fulford, who claimed to have been the model for the character Percy Marrow, described in the story as a "peeled potato with a little tuft of fuzz on top".

Contents

  • "True Trash"
  • "Hairball"
  • "Isis in Darkness"
  • "The Bog Man"
  • "Death by Landscape"
  • "Uncles"
  • "The Age of Lead"
  • "Weight"
  • "Wilderness Tips"
  • "Hack Wednesday"