Margaret Atwood facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Margaret Atwood CC OOnt CH FRSC FRSL
Atwood in 2022
Born	Margaret Eleanor Atwood (1939-11-18) November 18, 1939 (age 85) Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Education	University of Toronto (BA) Radcliffe College (MA)
Period	1961–present
Genre	Historical fiction speculative fiction climate fiction dystopian fiction
Notable works	Surfacing (1972) The Handmaid's Tale (1985) Cat's Eye (1988) Alias Grace (1996) The Blind Assassin (2000) Oryx and Crake (2003) The Testaments (2019)
Spouse	Jim Polk ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1973)​
Partner	Graeme Gibson (1973–2019; his death)
Children	1
Signature

Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born on November 18, 1939) is a famous Canadian writer. She writes novels, poems, and essays. Since 1961, she has published many books, including 18 novels, 18 poetry collections, and 8 children's books.

Her most famous book is the 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale. This book is a type of story called "dystopian fiction," which means it shows a future world where things have gone very wrong. Margaret Atwood has won many awards for her writing, like two Booker Prizes and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Many of her stories have also been made into movies and TV shows.

Atwood's books often explore important topics like gender, identity, religion, myths, the power of words, climate change, and how power works in society. She is also a co-founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada, which help support other writers. She even invented a special device called the LongPen that lets people sign documents from far away!

Margaret Atwood's Early Life and School

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, was an entomologist (a scientist who studies insects). Her mother, Margaret Dorothy, was a dietitian. Because of her father's work, Margaret spent a lot of her childhood in the forests of northern Quebec. She also traveled between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, and Toronto.

She didn't go to school full-time until she was 12 years old. She loved to read all kinds of books, including fairy tales and comic books. Margaret started writing plays and poems when she was just 6 years old. She realized she wanted to be a professional writer when she was 16.

In 1957, she started studying at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. There, she published poems and articles in the college's literary journal. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1961. She then went on to get her Master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1962.

Margaret Atwood's Family Life

Margaret Atwood has an older brother, Harold, and a younger sister, Ruth. She has mentioned that her grandmother believed they might be related to Mary Webster, a woman from the 1600s who was accused of witchcraft. Margaret dedicated her famous novel The Handmaid's Tale to Mary Webster.

In 1968, Margaret married Jim Polk, but they divorced in 1973. Soon after, she started a relationship with another novelist, Graeme Gibson. They moved to a farm in Ontario, and their daughter, Eleanor Jess, was born in 1976. The family moved back to Toronto in 1980. Margaret and Graeme were together until he passed away in 2019. Margaret has said that Graeme was very supportive of her writing.

Even though she is a very successful writer, Margaret Atwood says she is "a terrible speller"! She writes both on a computer and by hand. She also has a summer home on Pelee Island in Lake Erie.

Margaret Atwood's Writing Career

Starting Out in the 1960s

Margaret Atwood's first book of poems, Double Persephone, came out in 1961. It won an award called the E.J. Pratt Medal. She also taught English at different universities. In 1966, her poetry collection The Circle Game won the Governor General's Award, which is a big honor in Canada. Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. Many people saw it as an early example of her interest in women's issues.

Writing in the 1970s

During the 1970s, Margaret Atwood published six more poetry collections and three novels. Her novels from this time, like Surfacing (1972), explored ideas about identity and how society shapes gender roles. Her non-fiction book, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), helped make her a very important voice in Canadian writing. In 1977, she published her first collection of short stories, Dancing Girls, which also won awards. By 1976, she was so well-known that a magazine called her "Canada's most gossiped-about writer."

Famous Works in the 1980s

Margaret Atwood's fame grew even more in the 1980s. She published Bodily Harm (1981) and Cat's Eye (1988). Her most famous book, The Handmaid's Tale, came out in 1985. This book won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Governor General's Award.

The Handmaid's Tale is a type of story called "speculative fiction." Margaret Atwood explains that speculative fiction is about things that "could really happen" based on what we know today. She says that everything in The Handmaid's Tale has a real-life example.

Novels of the 1990s

In the 1990s, Atwood continued to publish popular novels like The Robber Bride (1993) and Alias Grace (1996). Alias Grace won the Giller Prize. Both of these novels use female characters to explore ideas about good and evil and what is right or wrong.

Books and Projects in the 2000s

Margaret Atwood at a reading in 2006.

In 2000, Margaret Atwood's novel The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize, which is a very important award for writers. She then wrote the MaddAddam Trilogy, which includes Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). These books are about a future world after a big disaster, exploring topics like genetic engineering and how corporations control things. Atwood says that the technologies in these books are not made up; they either already exist or are being developed.

In 2005, she wrote The Penelopiad, which tells the story of The Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope, Odysseus's wife. In 2016, she published Hag-Seed, a modern retelling of Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

In 2019, she released The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. This book also won the Booker Prize.

Non-Fiction and Opera

In 2008, Atwood published Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, a book based on her lectures about debt. She also wrote the story for a chamber opera called Pauline, which was performed in 2014.

Comic Books and Future Library

In 2016, Margaret Atwood started writing a superhero comic book series called Angel Catbird. She says that her speculative fiction, even in comics, is based on real things happening in the world.

She is also part of a special project called the Future Library project. She wrote a book called Scribbler Moon that will not be published until the year 2114! It's like a "Sleeping Beauty" story for books, where they sleep for 100 years before waking up.

The LongPen Invention

In 2004, Margaret Atwood had an idea for a device that would let her sign books from anywhere in the world without being there in person. This led to the invention of the LongPen, a robotic writing technology. She started a company to develop it, and today the technology is used for many remote signing needs. Margaret Atwood still holds patents for this invention.

Recent Poetry

In 2020, she published a new collection of poems called Dearly. These poems explore themes like growing older, memories, and loss.

Important Ideas in Margaret Atwood's Work

Canadian Identity

Margaret Atwood has written a lot about what it means to be Canadian. In her book Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, she suggests that Canadian stories often focus on the idea of "survival." This means characters often face challenges from nature, other people, or their own inner struggles. She believes that Canadian literature helps show what Canadian identity is all about.

Feminism

Many people see Margaret Atwood's work as important for feminism, which is about believing in equal rights for women. While she sometimes avoids the label "feminist," she has said that feminism means "a belief in the rights of women." Her books often explore how women are treated in society and what challenges they face. For example, The Handmaid's Tale asks, "If you were going to push women back into the home and take away their rights, how would you do it?"

Speculative Fiction

Margaret Atwood prefers to call her stories like The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake "speculative fiction" instead of "science fiction." She says that science fiction usually has things like "monsters and spaceships," but speculative fiction is about things that "could really happen" on Earth, using technologies that already exist or are being developed. She believes these kinds of stories help writers explore important themes in unique ways.

Animal Rights

Atwood often writes about how humans interact with animals. In her MaddAddam Trilogy, she explores what happens when animals and humans are genetically changed, creating new creatures. This makes readers think about the limits of science and what it means to be human. Margaret Atwood herself is a pescetarian, meaning she eats fish and seafood but no meat from animals with fur or feathers.

Political Views

Margaret Atwood cares deeply about environmental issues. She and her partner, Graeme Gibson, were honorary presidents of the Rare Bird Club. She has often spoken about the importance of protecting the environment. She also helped start the Canadian English-speaking branch of PEN International, a group that works to protect writers' freedom.

Her novel The Handmaid's Tale shows Canada as a place of escape from a harsh society in the United States. She has spoken out against certain political agreements and has encouraged Canadians to vote for parties that support the arts and the environment. After the 2016 US presidential election, sales of The Handmaid's Tale greatly increased, showing how relevant her stories remain.

TV Appearances

In 2024, Margaret Atwood had a small role in an episode of the TV show Murdoch Mysteries. She played an amateur bird watcher.

Activism

Margaret Atwood uses her voice to support important causes. In 2018, she signed an appeal to defend a Ukrainian director who was a political prisoner in Russia. In 2020, she was one of many people who signed a letter expressing concern about limits on free speech. She also continues to share information about the war in Ukraine on social media.

Adaptations of Margaret Atwood's Works

Many of Margaret Atwood's books have been turned into movies, TV shows, and even an opera!

• Her novel Surfacing (1972) was made into a film in 1981.
• The Handmaid's Tale (1985) has been adapted several times:
  • A 1990 film.
  • A 2000 opera.
  • A very popular TV series on Hulu, which started in 2017. Margaret Atwood even had a small cameo role in the first episode!
  • A graphic novel (comic book) version was published in 2019.
• Six of her short stories were adapted for a TV series called The Atwood Stories in 2003.
• Her lectures from Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008) were made into a documentary film called Payback in 2012.
• Her novel Alias Grace (1996) was adapted into a six-part TV miniseries in 2017. Margaret Atwood also had a cameo in this series.
• A documentary film called In the Wake of the Flood (2010) followed Atwood on a unique book tour for her novel The Year of the Flood.
• Her children's book Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop's Wunderground Washery (2011) was turned into an animated children's TV series called The Wide World of Wandering Wenda in 2017.

Awards and Honours

Margaret Atwood has received many awards and honorary degrees from universities around the world.

Margaret Atwood's Published Works

Here are some of Margaret Atwood's most well-known books:

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See also

In Spanish: Margaret Atwood para niños

• Southern Ontario Gothic
• Canadian poetry
• List of Canadian poets
• List of Canadian writers