Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, as well as in Toronto. As a child, she spent a lot of time in the wilderness of northern Canada because her father was an entomologist and conducted research there. She began writing at age five and, essentially, has never stopped.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She taught English at various universities throughout Canada and has authored more than fifty books and written on a wide range of topics and subjects. She has written novels, poetry, short stories, fiction, essays, graphic novels, radio and television scripts, and an opera libretto (for Pauline).
Atwood first came to public attention as a poet in the 1960s with her collection Double Persephone (1961), which was the winner of the E.J. Pratt Medal, and The Circle Game (1964), which won a Governor General’s Award. Numerous awards and honours have followed, including the Booker Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Dan David Prize, the Peace Prize of the Germany Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
She is considered one of Canada’s preeminent writers and was one of the first to seriously write about Canadian literature as distinctive from its American and British counterparts. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. The most recent, an adaptation of A Handmaid’s Tale, is a popular television show airing on Hulu.
Atwood met Canadian novelist and conservationist Graeme Gibson in the 1970s, and they moved in together in 1973. They never married but have a daughter together, Eleanor Jess. They shared a deep love of nature and birds in particular. The two actively supported bird conservation groups, and the two were joint Honorary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within Birdlife International (BLI). BLI and Adventure Canada recently established the Graeme Gibson Fellowship in his honour. Gibson passed away in 2019. Atwood has also supported writers throughout her career and served as president and vice president of PEN International. Atwood is known for her strong support and championing of women’s rights, environmentalism, and social justice. Atwood continues to write. Paper Boat, a collected volume of her poetry (new and old), will be released in October 2024.
