Margaret Atwood designs Halloween costumes for Detroit doctor

If you haven’t been paying attention to our literary matriarch lately, you may be unaware that Margaret Atwood is on Twitter, and she’s quite taken with the 140-character medium. When a Detroit nephrologist recommended two of her books to a friend, Atwood decided to contact him, then offered to design superhero Halloween costumes for the good doctor and his lady friend. Was this a joke? One might think so, but five days later, Peggy checked in with the following update:

@DrSnit and @kidney_boy: still tinkering with your outfits and magic words… can one make a crown out of painkiller pills?

A month later, Atwood delivered on her promise, posting her design for the outfit of Dr. Snit, a Flash-inspired number adapted for the female form, complete with a wand made of Tylenol capsules. (The woman can draw!) The Kidney Boy costume came two weeks later, looking suspiciously like Superman, but with a “K” instead of an “S,” and the charming additions of a bag of blood, a scalpel, and an actual kidney for a hat. Below the drawing, Atwood scrawled the following passage: “By day, a lowly nephrologist. By night, Kidney Boy—flying through the air to instantly insert kidneys, with his magic word—Nephro-Change-O!” Oh Peggy, how are you still so insatiably kooky, and how do you have such a ludicrous amount of time on your hands?

• How a famous author designed a doctor’s superhero costume [Gawker]