Margaret Atwood is set to make her debut as the author of an opera libretto, 15 years after she began work on the project.

Pauline, opening at the Vancouver City Opera House next May, dramatises the life of legendary Canadian writer, poet and actor Pauline Johnson. The novelist, who won the Booker prize in 2000 with The Blind Assassin, has been trying for more than a decade to bring the "operatic fireworks" of Johnson's life to the stage.

At the time the project was first announced, Atwood said: "She had courage, brains and beauty, like many of the best operatic heroines. She also led a double life, in which a secret love, a jealous sister and an early death were elements.''

Johnson was born in 1861 to a Mohawk chief and a Quaker Englishwoman, and lived an unconventional life pursuing literature and the stage.

The opera is set in Vancouver in 1913, at the end of her life. "Haunted by failure, torn by her dual identity … Pauline Johnson fights to confront her past before the end, as her doctor tries to control the pain and her sister tries to control the story that will be told," the City Opera Vancouver said.

But Atwood's ambition has been beset by creative hold-ups. Work first began in 1999 under the auspices of the Canadian Opera Company, but halted when composer Randolph Peters walked away, lacking interest in the subject, and it was put on hold for eight years.

In 2010, an attempt was made to revive the idea, this time for a smaller production with City Opera Vancouver, but it came to nought when a deal with musical collaborator Christos Hatzis could not be reached.

Finally composer Tobin Stokes was signed up last year, and following a CAD30,000 (£19,000) grant received from the Vancouver Foundation on 3 July 2013, a run of six to 10 performances will be staged at the 400-seater East Vancouver York Theatre in May 2014.

Atwood's classic dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for opera in 2000, in a Danish Royal Opera production, which also toured to the English National Opera in London. It has also been produced in the USA and Canada. The piece was enthusiastically received by critics. But the libretto for that work was by British librettist Paul Bentley.