Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, born in 1939, Canadian poet, novelist, and critic, whose works often feature women examining their relationships and society. Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in 1961 and a master’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1962. Atwood’s first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published in 1961. She continued writing while teaching English literature at various universities in Canada from 1964 to 1972 and while acting as writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto in 1972 and 1973.

Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman (1969), won international acclaim. Other novels followed: Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), and Life Before Man (1979). Objecting to the classification of some of her works as feminist, Atwood pointed out that she began dealing with themes such as growing up female in the 1950s and sex-role definitions before they were popularized by the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s (see Women’s Rights). Her novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985; motion picture, 1990) won a Governor General’s Literary Award, Canada’s highest literary honor, and was followed by Cat’s Eye (1988), The Robber Bride (1993), and Alias Grace (1996). The Handmaid’s Tale was turned into an opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders in 2000.

Atwood’s books of poetry also won critical favor. The Circle Game (1966) won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 1966, and Power Politics (1971) and You Are Happy (1974) were also praised. Atwood’s critical works include Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), Second Words: Selected Critical Prose (1982), and Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995). In addition, she edited The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (1982) and The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1986). Her other works include Wilderness Tips (1991), a collection of short stories; Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994), a collection of prose sketches, updated fairy tales, and parodies; and Morning in the Burned House (1995), a collection of poetry. The body of Atwood’s work was awarded the Welsh Arts Council’s International Writer’s Prize in 1982.

In 2000 Atwood won the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel The Blind Assassin (2000). The annual award is given to the best full-length novel written in the British Commonwealth. The novel tells the story of a woman who looks back on her life and the events surrounding her sister’s early death. Atwood looked toward the future in her next novel, Oryx and Crake (2003), and saw a bleak wasteland. The Penelopiad (2005) was a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. Her collection of related short stories Moral Disorder (2006) follows a Canadian family over the course of 60 years.