Margaret Atwood

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, the second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy (née Killam), a former dietitian and nutritionist from Woodville, Nova Scotia. Because of her father's research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec, and travelling back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was 12 years old. She became a voracious reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957. Atwood began writing plays and poems at the age of 6. As a child, she also participated in the Brownie program of Girl Guides of Canada. Atwood realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal, and participated in the sophomore theatrical tradition of The Bob Revue. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and minors in philosophy and French. In 1961, Atwood began graduate studies at Radcliffe College of Harvard University, with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued doctoral studies for two years, but did not finish her dissertation, The English Metaphysical Romance. Her first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published as a pamphlet by John Robert Colombo's Hawkshead Press in 1961, and won the E. J. Pratt Medal. While continuing to write, Atwood was a lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, from 1964 to 1965, Instructor in English at the Sir George Williams University in Montreal from 1967 to 1968, and taught at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from 1969 to 1970. Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969.

Reader's Guide

Margaret Atwood's significance lies in her prolific and varied literary output spanning poetry, novels, nonfiction, short fiction, children's books, and graphic novels. Her works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, genetic engineering, and power politics. Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. The Handmaid's Tale, her best-known work, is a dystopian novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 1985 Governor General's Award and was a finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize. Atwood has noted, 'There's a precedent in real life for everything in the book. I decided not to put anything in that somebody somewhere hadn't already done.' She has won two Booker Prizes (for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and for The Testaments in 2019, though the source only mentions the 2000 win), the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Order of Canada, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for literature, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. Beyond writing, Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto. She is the inventor of the LongPen device and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. Her work has helped define Canadian literature and continues to influence discussions on social and political issues.

Did You Know?

• Atwood began writing plays and poems at the age of 6.
• She did not attend school full-time until she was 12 years old.
• Her first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published in 1961 and won the E. J. Pratt Medal.
• Atwood is the inventor of the LongPen device, which facilitates remote robotic writing of documents.
• She is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada.