I soon had a few thousand people I didn't know sending me messages like OMG! Is it really you? I love it when old ladies blog, one early follower remarked. … and they really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that "Own the podium" was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested "A podium might be nice." Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged #cpodium: "A podium! For me?" "Rent the podium, see if we like it." "Mind if I squeeze by you to get onto that podium?" I was so proud of them! It was like having 33,000 precocious grandchildren!

"Atwood in the Twittersphere", The New York Review of Books (29 March 2010)