Margaret Atwood is $500G richer today…

Canadian author Margaret Atwood and lndian-Bengali novelist Amitav Ghosh have been awarded the Dan David Prize and will share the $1 million US award.

The prize is endowed by the Dan David Foundation out of Tel Aviv University and “recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms.

There are three $1 million prizes for past, present and future achievements awarded every year, with a rotating focus on the fields of sciences, arts, and humanities. Ten per cent of the prize is to be donated to graduate students.

Personally, I think she should donate the other 90% of her winnings to a youngish, relatively hot, first time novelist working a thankless day job as an arts advocate and blogging popularly by night under an invented, acerbic identity… Maybe someone bearded and redheaded, trending toward portly, whose life would be irrevocably changed by the kindness of of a wild-haired stranger… Someone who, between parenting, work, and the pressures of daily cataloging of ultimately meaningless news items, just can’t seem to find the time to get the goddamn thing written and it’s slowly killing him, killing him, I tell you… But I digress. Congratulations, Mme Atwood.