Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood

Atwood in 1988
Born November 18, 1939 (1939-11-18) (age 68)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupation Novelist, Poet
Nationality Canadian
Genres Romance, Historical fiction, Speculative fiction, Dystopian fiction
Notable work(s) The Handmaid's Tale
Official website

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. A prolific poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist, she is a winner of the Booker Prize and Arthur C. Clarke Award, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. Atwood is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history.[1] While she is best known for her work as a novelist, her poetry is noteworthy. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths, and fairy tales, which were an interest of hers from an early age. Atwood also published short stories in Playboy magazine.

Contents

[edit] Life

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Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Atwood is the second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy Killiam, a former dietitian and nutritionist. Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was 11 years old. She became a voracious reader of refined literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto and graduated in 1957.

Atwood began writing at age six and realised she wanted to write when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria University in the University of Toronto. 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 the fall of 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately-printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University for 2 years, but never finished because she never completed a dissertation on “The English Metaphysical Romance” in 1967. She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-68), the University of Alberta (1969-79), York University in Toronto (1971-72), and New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.

In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk, whom she divorced in 1973. She got together with fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon after and moved to Alliston, Ontario, north of Toronto. In 1976 their daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson, was born. (Graeme Gibson had two sons, Matt and Grae, from a previous marriage.) Atwood returned to Toronto in 1980. She divides her time between Toronto and Pelee Island, Ontario.

Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson are members of the Green Party of Canada and strong supporters of GPC leader Elizabeth May, whom Atwood has referred to as fearless, honest, reliable and knowledgeable. Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,[2], such as suggesting that petrol-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers be banned, and has made her own home more energy efficient – including not having air-conditioning - by installing awnings and skylights that open. She and her husband also use a hybrid car when they are in the city. Atwood is also a very active feminist.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

[edit] Poetry collections

[edit] Short fiction collections

[edit] Anthologies edited

  • The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (1982)
  • The Canlit Foodbook: From Pen to palate - A Collection of Tasty Literary Fare (1987)
  • The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1988)
  • The Best American Short Stories 1989 (1989) (with Shannon Ravenel)
  • The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1995)

[edit] Other short stories

[edit] Children's books

  • Up in the Tree (1978)
  • Anna's Pet (1980) with Joyce C. Barkhouse
  • For the Birds (1990) (with Shelly Tanaka)
  • Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995)
  • Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (2003)
  • Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda (2006)

[edit] Non-fiction

[edit] Drawings

  • Kanadian Kultchur Komix featuring "Survivalwoman" in This Magazine under the pseudonym, Bart Gerrard 1975-1980
  • Others appear on her website.


[edit] See also

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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Honor roll:Fiction authors. Award Annals (2007-11-17).
  2. ^ Interview with author Margaret Atwood

[edit] References

  • Carrington de Papp, I. Margaret Atwood and Her Works. Toronto: EWC, 1985.
  • Cooke, N. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Toronto: ECW, 1998.
  • Hengen, Shannon and Ashley Thomson. Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007.
  • Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.
  • Howells, Coral Ann. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-54851-9
  • Rigney, B. Margaret Atwood. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987.
  • Rosenburg H. J. Margaret Atwood. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
  • Sullivan, Rosemary. The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out. Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 1998. ISBN 0-00-255423-2

[edit] External links

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v • d • e
Scotiabank Giller Prize laureates
M.G. Vassanji (1994) · Rohinton Mistry (1995) · Margaret Atwood (1996) · Mordecai Richler (1997) · Alice Munro (1998) · Bonnie Burnard (1999) · Michael Ondaatje / David Adams Richards (2000) · Richard B. Wright (2001) · Austin Clarke (2002) · M.G. Vassanji (2003) · Alice Munro (2004) · David Bergen (2005) · Vincent Lam (2006) · Elizabeth Hay (2007)
v • d • e
Man Booker Prize for Fiction
1969–1980

P. H. Newby (1969) Bernice Rubens (1970) · V. S. Naipaul (1971) · John Berger (1972) · James Gordon Farrell (1973) · Nadine Gordimer / Stanley Middleton (1974) · Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) · David Storey (1976) · Paul Scott (1977) · Iris Murdoch (1978) · Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) · William Golding (1980)
1981–2000

Salman Rushdie (1981) · Thomas Keneally (1982) · John Maxwell Coetzee (1983) · Anita Brookner (1984) · Keri Hulme (1985) · Kingsley Amis (1986) · Penelope Lively (1987) · Peter Carey (1988) · Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) · A. S. Byatt (1990) · Ben Okri (1991) · Michael Ondaatje / Barry Unsworth (1992) · Roddy Doyle (1993) · James Kelman (1994) · Pat Barker (1995) · Graham Swift (1996) · Arundhati Roy (1997) · Ian McEwan (1998) · John Maxwell Coetzee (1999) · Margaret Atwood (2000)
2001–present

Peter Carey (2001) · Yann Martel (2002) · DBC Pierre (2003) · Alan Hollinghurst (2004) · John Banville (2005) · Kiran Desai (2006) · Anne Enright (2007)
Persondata
NAME Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Canadian
DATE OF BIRTH
PLACE OF BIRTH Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH