“If you don’t want to get a bad reputation like me, wear fuzzy pink angora sweaters and dye your hair blonde,” she said. “It does wonders.”

After her speech, Atwood answered questions from the audience about her writing style and specific works.

She declined to respond to a questions about her narrative voice, comparing writing to skiing.

“If you think too much about it while you’re doing it, you fall down,” she said.

She also pointed out the Harvard parallels in her 1998 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, citing the presence of Widener Library and the Brattle Square Theatre.

“You can find every single building,” she said. “Harvard was not amused when I published this book.”

A reception and book-signing in the Cronkhite Graduate Center Living Room followed the speech.

The next Radcliffe Dean’s Lecture will feature University of California at Berkeley Professor of Computer Science Susan L. Graham on Nov. 29.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.