Margaret Atwood, in full Margaret Eleanor Atwood, (born November 18, 1939,

Ottawа, Ontario, Canada), Canadian writer best known for her prose fiction and for
her feminist perspective.

As an adolescent, Atwood divided her time between Toronto, her family’s primary
residence, and the sparsely settled bush country in northern Canada, where her
father, an entomologist, conducted research. She began writing at age five and
resumed her efforts, more seriously, a decade later. After completing her university
studies at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, Atwood earned a master’s
degree in English literature from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in
1962.

Top 10 facts:

1. Atwood is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Man Booker Prize.
Margaret Atwood won the Man Booker Prize, one of the literary world’s most
prestigious, for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and more recently for The Testaments in
2019.

2. Margaret Atwood’s parents were both scientists. Her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, was
an entomologist who studied forests. This meant that Atwood spent a great deal of time in
the woods alongside her family. She grew up in Canada and recalls learning in the woods
alongside her siblings. Her mother, Margaret Dorothy, was a dietician and nutritionist.

3. She wrote an opera. Margaret Atwood is not afraid to experiment with a new genre or art
form. She has written novels, non-fiction books, books of verse, a comic book, and an opera.
It was titled, Pauline. Atwood was commissioned to write it in 2008 and it didn’t premiere
until 2014. She wrote the story and all the words while Tobin Stokes wrote the music to
accompany it. It follows the later life of Pauline Johnson, a Canadian writer, and performer
who died in 1913. The opera focuses specifically on the last days of her life.

4. Atwood is the honorary President of the Rare Bird Society within Birdlife International.
This is a slightly humorous, although very endearing, position that Atwood holds along with
her partner, Graeme Gibson. This is one of the many parts of Atwood’s life that signals the
importance she places on the environment.

5. Atwood’s first published volume of poetry appeared in 1961. Margaret Atwood’s

first collection of poetry was titled Double Persephone.

6. She lived in West Berlin during the Cold War. While The Handmaid’s Tale was
published in Canada, it was written in several countries, including Germany, in 1984.
While speaking about her time there and its influence on The Handmaid’s Tale,
Atwood describes visiting Czechoslovakia and Poland and senses the atmosphere
that she wanted to create in her novel.
7. The Handmaid’s Tale is dedicated to Atwood’s ancestor, an accused witch.
Atwood dedicated the novel to Mary Webster. She was one of the first women
accused of witchcraft in New England in the 17th century. When she was sixty years
old, she was accused and brought to a jury in Boston on “suspicion of witchcraft.”
She was found not guilty at the time. A year later, Philip Smith, a hypochondriac and
judge in the town of Hadley, accused Webster again. He believed that she had
caused his illness. His friends hanged Webster, but she survived.

8. Since 1961, Margaret Atwood has published 18 books of poetry and 18 novels. By
the way, The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace have both been made into television
series. The former streaming on Hulu and the latter on Netflix.

9. She is an outspoken environmentalist. Her Maddaddam series, which includes

Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam, is the best example. In these
novels, she focuses on a world that has endured an environmental disaster and
whose characters are trying to cope with their new world.
When asked to speak about her environmentalism, Atwood explained that she writes
about futures that are based on what humanity is currently experiencing. They are
“probably futures”.

10. Atwood is part of The Future Library Project. Atwood was the first writer to
contribute to this original project conceived by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. Every
year, one writer contributes for the next hundred years. Paterson planted an entire
forest to be used for the purpose of printing the book in the future. It won’t be
released, nor will any of the work that’s included in it, until 2114.