The Handmaid's Tale, which has collected eight Emmy and two Golden Globe awards for its first season, will be returning to home screens this spring.

Season 1 is streaming on Crave TV.

Season 2, which will feature 13 episodes, premieres on April 29 at 6 p.m. PST on Bravo.

This season will chronicle the pregnancy of June Osborne/Offred (Elisabeth Moss) and her efforts to free her child from the oppressive, totalitarian Gilead, in which women are second-class citizens. All characters will wrestle with the dark truth of Aunt Lydia's catchphrase "Gilead is within you".

The cast also includes Joseph Fiennes, Alexis Bledel, Yvonne Strahovski, Max Minghella, and Amanda Brugel.

The Toronto-shot series is based on the 1985 dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

https://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/955505129708556290

Atwood stirred up controversy when the Globe and Mail published her commentary piece on January 13 entitled "Am I Bad a Feminist?"

The essay addressed the criticism she received after she became one of several Canadian authors who signed an online letter that called for UBC to be held accountable for the 2016 firing of UBC Creative Writing chair and author Steven Galloway.

Galloway had been accused of sexual assault by a former student, with whom he disagreed as to whether the relationship was consensual.

Regarding the Galloway case, Atwood noted how she had come under attack for comparing the UBC proceedings to the Salem witch trials "in which a person was guilty because accused". She stated she was not calling her critics "witchfinders" but was "alluding instead to the structure in place at the trials themselves".

She expressed concerns about the #MeToo movement. Though she calls it "a symptom of a broken legal system", she cites historical examples to warn how "understandable and temporary vigilante justice can morph into a culturally solidified lynch-mob habit".

She called upon "both the Good Feminists and the Bad Feminists like me—to drop their unproductive squabbling, join forces and direct the spotlight where it should have been all along—at UBC".

The commentary piece sparked an online backlash, prompting Atwood to defend her position on Twitter, and stirring debate both within and outside of Canadian literary circles.