Margaret Atwood, 76, is theauthor of more than 40 booksof poetry and fiction, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and is a winner of Britain’s Man Booker Prize. Her latest novel is “The Heart Goes Last” (Anchor). She spoke with Marc Myers.

Part of my childhood was spent in the Canadian wilderness. My father was a forest entomologist for the government and studied the impact of insects on trees. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, forests became crucial to the effort, since the war required an enormous amount of paper.