15 Canadian things America should trade for to form a pop culture super team

9. Joyce Carol Oates for Margaret Atwood

On a purely superficial level, a person on the street may be forgiven for mistaking Joyce Carol Oates for Margaret Atwood. Both are distinguished women with clear intelligence and a certain kind of artistic, impish look to them. If anyone could ever be described as having a “twinkle” in their eye without it becoming cloyingly, eye-rollingly lame, it would be Oates and Atwood.

Also, don’t Oates and Atwood sound like it could be the name of a super-fun folk singing duo? Just me?

Anyway, both writers are also serious intellectual forces within the literary world. Atwood has been a big force in modern literature for decades now. She’s most recently come to increased public awareness thanks to Hulu’s series, The Handmaid’s Tale. That highly successful and eerily relevant series is based on Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name. She isn’t just a novelist, either, though that’s enough to make me feel awed. She’s also a poet, nonfiction writer, activist, literary critic, and comics author.

However, trading Oates would be a pretty difficult pill to swallow. She’s been working for many decades (her first novel was published in 1963) and has put out over 40 novels. That’s not counting the many short stories, novellas, and plays Oates has produced, too.

Of course, her volume of work isn’t the only thing to consider. Atwood has been granted the Order of Canada, won the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Aware, and founded the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Oates, meanwhile, has won the United States’ National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards for her short stories, and the National Humanities Medal.

Oates also founded The Ontario Review in 1974, a literary magazine intended to act as a bridge between Canadian and American culture.