Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939 and is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. She has won numerous awards, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C Clarke for Imagination Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

One of Canada’s most distinguished writers, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature in 2019. 

Despite not attending full-time school until the age of 12, Margaret was an avid reader and writer throughout her childhood. After deciding to write professionally, she studied at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and minors in Philosophy and French. Later that year, she began graduate studies at Radcliffe College at Harvard University.

Margaret has been a full-time writer since 1972, has taught English, and has held several academic posts.

Margaret is best known for her novels, which include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and MaddAddam. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by the sequel The Testaments, which was a global number-one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020, she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed by Burning Questions in 2022, a selection of essays from 2004 to 2021.

Margaret has been awarded 16 honorary degrees, and has lived in Canada, England, Scotland, and France. She currently lives in Toronto.