Atwood, Margaret

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{{Infobox Writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox Writer/doc]] —>
 
{{Infobox Writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox Writer/doc]] —>
 
|name        = Margaret Atwood
 
|name        = Margaret Atwood
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|image      = Margaret Atwood at demonstration.jpg
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|image      = Margaret Atwood - Foire du Livre de Francfort (37025811914).jpg
 
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|caption    = Margaret Atwood at a demonstration in 1988
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|caption    = Margaret Atwood in 2017
 
|birthdate  = {{birth date and age|mf=yes|1939|11|18}}
 
|birthdate  = {{birth date and age|mf=yes|1939|11|18}}
 
|birthplace = [[Ottawa]], [[Ontario]], [[Canada]]
 
|birthplace = [[Ottawa]], [[Ontario]], [[Canada]]
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|website = http://www.owtoad.com
 
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'''Margaret Eleanor Atwood,''' [[Order of Canada]] (November 18, 1939 - ) is a Canadian [[writer]], a prolific [[poet]], [[novel]]ist, [[literary criticism|literary critic]], [[feminism|feminist]], and [[activism|activist]]. Many of her poems have been inspired by [[myths]], and [[fairy tales]], which were an interest of hers from an early age. Her early poems revealed her love of nature born of her early experiences in the wilderness of northern Quebec.  
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'''Margaret Eleanor Atwood,''' [[Order of Canada]] (November 18, 1939 - ) is a Canadian poet, novelist, [[literary critic]], essayist, inventor, teacher, and [[environmental activist]]. Since 1961, she has published 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 books of non-fiction, eight collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and one graphic novel, as well as a number of [[small press]] editions in poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including the [[Man Booker Prize]], [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]], [[Governor General's Award]], [[Franz Kafka Prize]], and the [[Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award|National Book Critics]] and [[PEN Center USA]] Lifetime Achievement Awards.
  
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Her later novels reveal her left-leaning sensibilities, including a distrust of [[religion]] and a critique of the excess materialism of consumer society. Her primary emphasis, however, was on [[feminism|the role of women in contemporary society]]. Titles like ''The Edible Woman'' and ''Surfacing'' use the metaphors of cannibalism and drowning to express the obstacles that prevent women from achieving success and happiness in contemporary society.
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Atwood is also the inventor and developer of the [[LongPen]] and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television, increasing her exposure. 
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Many of her poems have been inspired by [[myths]], and [[fairy tales]], which were an interest of hers from an early age. Her early poems revealed her love of nature born of her early experiences in the wilderness of northern Quebec. Her later novels reveal her left-leaning sensibilities, including a distrust of [[religion]] and a critique of the excess materialism of consumer society. Her primary emphasis, however, was on [[feminism|the role of women in contemporary society]]. Titles like ''The Edible Woman'' and ''Surfacing'' use the metaphors of cannibalism and drowning to express the obstacles that prevent women from achieving success and happiness in contemporary society.  Her best known work is ''The Handmaid's Tale'' which depicts a [[dystopia|dystopian]] society governed by religious fundamentalists.
 
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Her best known work is ''The Handmaid's Tale'' which depicts a [[dystopia|dystopian]] society governed by religious fundamentalists.
 
  
 
==Biography==
 
==Biography==
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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.<ref name=lumin>Luminarian, [http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm Margaret Atwood Page.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> 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, Ontario|Sault Ste. Marie]] and [[Toronto]]. She did not attend school full-time until she was 11 years old. She became a voracious reader of literature, [[Dell Publishing|Dell]] pocketbook mysteries, [[Brothers Grimm|Grimm's Fairy Tales]], Canadian animal stories, and [[comic book]]s. She attended Leaside High School in [[Leaside]], Toronto, and graduated in 1957.<ref name=lumin/>
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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.<ref name=lumin>[http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm Margaret Atwood] ''Luminarian''. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref> 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, Ontario|Sault Ste. Marie]] and [[Toronto]]. She did not attend school full-time until she was 11 years old. She became a voracious reader of literature, [[Dell Publishing|Dell]] pocketbook mysteries, [[Brothers Grimm|Grimm's Fairy Tales]], Canadian animal stories, and [[comic book]]s. She attended Leaside High School in [[Leaside]], Toronto, and graduated in 1957.<ref name=lumin/>
  
 
Atwood began writing at age six and realized she wanted to write professionally 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 (honors) and minors in [[philosophy]] and [[French language|French]].<ref name=lumin/>
 
Atwood began writing at age six and realized she wanted to write professionally 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 (honors) and minors in [[philosophy]] and [[French language|French]].<ref name=lumin/>
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In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk, whom she divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship 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. Atwood returned to Toronto in 1980, dividing her time between Toronto and [[Pelee Island]], Ontario.
 
In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk, whom she divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship 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. Atwood returned to Toronto in 1980, dividing her time between Toronto and [[Pelee Island]], Ontario.
  
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In March 2008 it was announced by Atwood, via television hookup between Toronto and Vancouver, that she had accepted her first chamber opera commission. ''Pauline'' will be on the subject of [[Pauline Johnson]], a writer and Canadian artist long a subject of fascination to Atwood. It will star Judith Forst, with music by Christos Hatzis, and be produced by [[City Opera of Vancouver]]. ''Pauline'' will be set at Vancouver, British Columbia, in March 1913, in the last week in the life of Johnson.
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==Career==
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=== 1960s ===
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Atwood's first book of poetry, ''[[Double Persephone]]'', was published as a pamphlet by Hawskhead Press in 1961, winning the [[E. J. Pratt|E.J. Pratt]] Medal.<ref>[https://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2810 The Plutzik Reading Series Features Margaret Atwood] ''The University of Rochester'', March 12, 2007. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> While continuing to write, Atwood was a lecturer in English at the [[University of British Columbia]], Vancouver, from 1964 to 1965, Instructor in English at the [[Sir George Williams University]] in [[Montreal]] from 1967 to 1968, and taught at the [[University of Alberta]] from 1969 to 1970.<ref name=VanSpanckeren /> In 1966, ''[[The Circle Game (collection)|The Circle Game]]'' was published, winning the [[Governor General's Award]].<ref name=":0">[https://ggbooks.ca/past-winners-and-finalists Past GGBooks winners and finalists] ''Governor General’s Literary Awards''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> This collection was followed by three other small press collections of poetry: ''Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem'', Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); ''Talismans for Children'', Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); and ''[[Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein]]'', Cranbrook Academy of Art (1966); as well as, ''[[The Animals in That Country]]'' (1968). Atwood's first novel, ''[[The Edible Woman]]'', was published in 1969. As a social satire of North American consumerism, many critics have often cited the novel as an early example of the feminist concerns found in many of Atwood's works.<ref>Nathalie Cooke, ''Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion'' (Greenwood, 2004, ISBN 978-0313328060).</ref>
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=== 1970s ===
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Atwood taught at [[York University]] in Toronto from 1971 to 1972 and was a writer-in-residence at the [[University of Toronto]] during the 1972/1973 academic year.<ref name=VanSpanckeren> Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, ''Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms'' (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0809314089).</ref> A prolific period for her poetry, Atwood published six collections over the course of the decade: ''[[The Journals of Susanna Moodie]]'' (1970), ''[[Procedures for Underground]]'' (1970), ''[[Power Politics (collection)|Power Politics]]'' (1971), ''You Are Happy'' (1974), ''Selected Poems 1965–1975'' (1976), and ''[[Two-Headed Poems]]'' (1978). Atwood also published three novels during this time: ''[[Surfacing (novel)|Surfacing]]'' (1972); ''[[Lady Oracle]]'' (1976); and ''[[Life Before Man]]'' (1979), which was a finalist for the [[1979 Governor General's Awards|Governor General's Award]].<ref name=":0" /> ''Surfacing'', ''Lady Oracle'', and ''Life Before Man'', like ''The Edible Woman'', explore identity and social constructions of gender as they relate to topics such as nationhood and sexual politics.<ref name=Howells>Coral Ann Howells, ''Margaret Atwood'' (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996, ISBN 9780312128913).</ref> In particular, ''Surfacing'', along with her first non-fiction monograph, ''[[Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature]]'' (1972), helped establish Atwood as an important and emerging voice in Canadian literature.<ref>Cinda Gault, ''National and Female Identity in Canadian Literature, 1965-1980: The Fiction of Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Marian Engel'' (Edwin Mellen Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0773426221).</ref> In 1977 Atwood published her first short story collection, ''[[Dancing Girls (book)|Dancing Girls]]'', which was the winner of the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction.<ref name=VanSpanckeren/>
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=== 1980s ===
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Atwood's literary reputation continued to rise in the 1980s with the publication of ''[[Bodily Harm (novel)|Bodily Harm]]'' (1981); ''[[The Handmaid's Tale]]'' (1985), winner of the [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]]<ref name=Arthur/> and [[1985 Governor General's Awards|1985 Governor General's Award]]<ref name=":0" /> and finalist for the 1986 [[Booker Prize]];<ref name=Booker/> and ''[[Cat's Eye (novel)|Cat's Eye]]'' (1988), finalist for both the [[1988 Governor General's Awards|1988 Governor General's Award]]<ref name=":0" /> and the 1989 [[Booker Prize]]. Despite her distaste for literary labels, Atwood has since conceded to referring to ''The Handmaid's Tale'' as a work of [[science fiction]] or, more accurately, [[speculative fiction]].<ref>Margaret Atwood, [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/jun/17/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.margaretatwood Aliens have taken the place of angels] ''The Guardian'', June 16, 2005. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref><ref>Margaret Atwood, ''In Other Worlds : SF and the Human Imagination'' (Anchor, 2012, ISBN 978-0307741769).</ref> As she has repeatedly noted, "There's a precedent in real life for everything in the book. I decided not to put anything in that somebody somewhere hadn't already done."<ref> Sam Gillette and Kim Hubbard, [https://people.com/books/margaret-atwood-talks-handmaids-tale-trump-era/?xid=socialflow_twitter_peoplemag Margaret Atwood on Why ''The Handmaid's Tale'' Margaret Atwood on Why The Handmaid's Tale Resonates in the Trump Era: It's 'No Longer a Fantasy Fiction'] ''People'', May 5, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
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While reviewers and critics have been tempted to read autobiographical elements of Atwood's life in her work, particularly ''Cat's Eye'',<ref>Alice McDermott, [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/03/specials/atwood-eye.html What Little Girls Are Made Of] ''The New York Times, February 5, 1989. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref><ref name=VanSpanckeren/> in general Atwood resists the desire of critics to read too closely for an author's life in their writing.<ref>Rebecca Mead, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/margaret-atwood-the-prophet-of-dystopia Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia] ''The New Yorker'', April 10, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
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During the 1980s, Atwood continued to teach, serving as the MFA Honorary Chair the [[University of Alabama]] in [[Tuscaloosa, Alabama|Tuscaloosa]], 1985; the Berg Professor of English, [[New York University]], 1986; Writer-in-Residence, [[Macquarie University]], Australia, 1987; and Writer-in-Residence, [[Trinity University (Texas)|Trinity University]], San Antonio, Texas, 1989.<ref name=VanSpanckeren/> Regarding her stints with teaching, she has noted, "Success for me meant no longer having to teach at university."<ref>[https://people.com/archive/reflected-in-margaret-atwoods-cats-eye-girlhood-looms-as-a-time-of-cruelty-and-terror-vol-31-no-9/ Reflected in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, Girlhood Looms as a Time of Cruelty and Terror] ''People'', March 6, 1989. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
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=== 1990s ===
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Atwood's reputation as a writer continued to grow with the publication of the novels ''[[The Robber Bride]]'' (1993), finalist for the [[1994 Governor General's Awards|1994 Governor General's Award]]<ref name=":0" /> and shortlisted for the [[James Tiptree Jr. Award]],<ref>[https://tiptree.org/award/1993-james-tiptree-jr-award/1993-honor-list 1993 Honor List] James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award''. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref> and ''[[Alias Grace]]'' (1996), winner of the 1996 [[Giller Prize]], finalist for the 1996 [[Booker Prize]],<ref name=Booker/> finalist for the [[1996 Governor General's Awards|1996 Governor General's Award]],<ref name=":0" /> and shortlisted for the 1997 [[Orange Prize for Fiction]].<ref>[https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/1997 Women's Prize for Fiction 1997]. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> Although vastly different in context and form, both novels use female characters to question good and evil and morality through their portrayal of female villains. As Atwood noted about ''[[The Robber Bride]]'', "I'm not making a case for evil behavior, but unless you have some women characters portrayed as evil characters, you're not playing with a full range."<ref>Margaret Carroll, [https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-12-05-9312050151-story.html Margaret Atwood's New Book Explores Power's Duality] ''Chicago Tribune'', December 5, 1993. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> ''The Robber Bride'' takes place in contemporary Toronto, while ''Alias Grace'' is a work of historical fiction detailing the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. Atwood had previously written the 1974 [[CBC Television|CBC]] made-for-TV film ''The Servant Girl'', about the life of [[Grace Marks]], the young servant who, along with James McDermott, was convicted of the crime.<ref name=FullBiblio>[http://margaretatwood.ca/full-bibliography-2/ Full Bibliography] ''Margaret Atwood'' Website. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
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=== 2000s ===
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[[File:Margaret Atwood 2015.jpg|thumb|upright|Atwood at the 2015 [[Texas Book Festival]]]]
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==== Novels ====
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In 2000 Atwood published her tenth novel, ''[[The Blind Assassin]]'', to critical acclaim, winning both the [[Booker Prize]]<ref name=Booker/> and the [[Hammett Prize]] in 2000.<ref>[http://www.crimewritersna.org/hammett/past.htm The Hammett Prize: Past Winner, Nominees, and Judges] ''International Association of Crime Writers''. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref> ''The Blind Assassin'' was also nominated for the [[Governor General's Award]] in 2000<ref name=":0" /> and the [[Orange Prize for Fiction]] in 2001.<ref name=Awards/> In 2001, Atwood was inducted into [[Canada's Walk of Fame]].<ref>[https://www.canadaswalkoffame.com/inductee/margaret-atwood Margaret Atwood] ''Canada's Walk of Fame''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> Atwood followed this success with the publication of ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'' in 2003, the first novel in a series that also includes ''[[The Year of the Flood]]'' (2009) and ''[[MaddAddam]]'' (2013), which would collectively come to be known as the MaddAddam Trilogy. The apocalyptic vision in the MaddAddam Trilogy engages themes of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, and man-made disaster.<ref>Karma Waltonen, ''Margaret Atwood's apocalypses'' (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1443868822).</ref> As a work of speculative fiction, Atwood notes of the technology in ''Oryx and Crake'', "I think, for the first time in human history, we see where we might go. We can see far enough into the future to know that we can't go on the way we've been going forever without inventing, possibly, a lot of new and different things."<ref>[https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/margaret-atwood-on-the-science-behind-oryx-and-crake/ Margaret Atwood on the Science Behind ''Oryx and Crake''] ''Science Friday''. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref> She later cautions in the acknowledgements to ''MaddAddam'', "Although ''MaddAddam'' is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or bio-beings that do not already exist, are not under construction or are not possible in theory."<ref>Margaret Atwood, ''MaddAddam'' (Anchor, 2014, ISBN 978-0307455482).</ref>
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In 2005 Atwood published the novella ''[[The Penelopiad]]'' as part of the [[Canongate Myth Series]]. The story is a retelling of ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'' from the perspective of [[Penelope]] and a chorus of the twelve maids murdered at the end of the original tale. ''The Penelopiad'' was made into a theatrical production in 2007.<ref name=FullBiblio/>
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In 2016 Atwood published the novel ''[[Hag-Seed]]'', a modern-day retelling of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]'s ''[[The Tempest]]'', as part of [[Penguin Random House]]'s Hogarth Shakespeare Series.<ref>Adam Gopnik, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/why-rewrite-shakespeare Why Rewrite Shakespeare?] ''The New Yorker'', October 17, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
  
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==Works==
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On November 28, 2018, Atwood announced that she would publish ''[[The Testaments]]'', a sequel to ''[[The Handmaid's Tale]]'', in September 2019.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/books/margaret-atwood-sequel-handmaids-tale-testaments.html Margaret Atwood Will Write a Sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale'] ''The New York Times'', November 28, 2018. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref> The novel features three female narrators and takes place fifteen years after the character Offred's final scene in ''The Handmaid's Tale''. The book was announced as the joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize on October 14, 2019.<ref>Alison Flood, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/14/booker-prize-judges-break-the-rules-and-insist-on-joint-winners Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo share Booker prize 2019] ''The Guardian'', October 14, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref>
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Atwood has written thematically diverse novels from a number of genres and traditions, including [[science fiction]]/[[speculative fiction]],<ref>''The Guardian.''</ref> [[space opera]] and [[Southern Ontario Gothic]]. She is often described as a [[Feminism|feminist writer]], as issues of gender often (but not always) appear prominently in her work. Her work has focused on Canadian national identity, Canada’s relations with the United States and Europe, [[human rights]] issues, environmental issues, the Canadian wilderness, the social myths of femininity, representations of women’s bodies in art, women’s social and economic exploitation, as well as women’s relations with each other and with men.<ref>Coral Ann Howells, ''Margaret Atwood'' (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996, ISBN 9780312128913), 163.</ref> In her novel ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'' and in recent essays, she has demonstrated great interest in (and wariness of) unchecked [[biotechnology]].  
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====Invention of the LongPen====
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In early 2004, while on the paperback tour in Denver for her novel ''Oryx and Crake'', Atwood conceived the concept of a remote robotic writing technology, what would later be known as the [[LongPen]], that would enable a person to remotely write in ink anywhere in the world via tablet PC and the Internet, thus allowing her to conduct her book tours without being physically present. She quickly founded a company, Unotchit Inc., to develop, produce and distribute this technology. By 2011, Unotchit Inc. shifted its market focus into business and legal transactions and was producing a range of products, for a variety of remote writing applications, based on the LongPen technologies and renamed itself to Syngrafii Inc.<ref>[https://www.syngrafii.com/about/ Company History] ''Syngrafii''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
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Atwood has written thematically diverse novels from a number of genres and traditions, including [[science fiction]]/[[speculative fiction]], [[space opera]], and [[Southern Ontario Gothic]]. She is often described as a [[Feminism|feminist writer]], as issues of gender often (but not always) appear prominently in her work. Her work has focused on Canadian national identity, Canada’s relations with the United States and Europe, [[human rights]] issues, environmental issues, the Canadian wilderness, the social myths of femininity, representations of women’s bodies in art, women’s social and economic exploitation, as well as women’s relations with each other and with men.<ref name=Howells/> In her novel ''[[Oryx and Crake]]'' and in recent essays, she has demonstrated great interest in (and wariness of) unchecked [[biotechnology]].  
  
 
Her first collection of poetry was ''Double Persephone'' (1961). ''The Circle Game'' (1964), her second, won the Governor General's award for poetry. Of Atwood's poetry collections, the most well-known is perhaps ''The Journals of Susanna Moodie'' (1970), in which Atwood writes poems from the viewpoint of [[Susanna Moodie]], a historical nineteenth-century Canadian pioneer on the frontier.
 
Her first collection of poetry was ''Double Persephone'' (1961). ''The Circle Game'' (1964), her second, won the Governor General's award for poetry. Of Atwood's poetry collections, the most well-known is perhaps ''The Journals of Susanna Moodie'' (1970), in which Atwood writes poems from the viewpoint of [[Susanna Moodie]], a historical nineteenth-century Canadian pioneer on the frontier.
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''The Handmaid's Tale'' is Atwood's best known work. A [[dystopia|dystopian novel]], it was first published by [[McClelland and Stewart]] [[1985 in literature|in 1985]]. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain [[agency (philosophy)|agency]], against the backdrop of a [[totalitarian]] pseudo-Christian [[theocracy]] which has overthrown the [[United States]] [[government]] in the near future. [[Sumptuary law]]s (dress codes) play a key role in imposing [[social control]] within the new society.
 
''The Handmaid's Tale'' is Atwood's best known work. A [[dystopia|dystopian novel]], it was first published by [[McClelland and Stewart]] [[1985 in literature|in 1985]]. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain [[agency (philosophy)|agency]], against the backdrop of a [[totalitarian]] pseudo-Christian [[theocracy]] which has overthrown the [[United States]] [[government]] in the near future. [[Sumptuary law]]s (dress codes) play a key role in imposing [[social control]] within the new society.
  
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The [[American Library Association]] lists it in "10 Most Challenged [[1999 in literature|Books of 1999]]" and as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–[[2000 in literature|2000]]"<ref>ALA, [http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm  ALA List of 100.] Retrieved January 2, 2009. </ref>
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''The Handmaid's Tale'' won the [[Governor General's Award]] for 1985, and the first [[Arthur C. Clarke|Arthur C. Clarke Award]] [[1987 in literature|in 1987]]. It was also nominated for [[1986 in literature|the 1986]] [[Nebula Award]], the 1986 [[Booker Prize]], and the 1987 [[Prometheus Award]]. It has been adapted numerous times for stage, screen and most recently television.
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''The Handmaid's Tale'' won the [[Governor General's Award]] for 1985, and the first [[Arthur C. Clarke|Arthur C. Clarke Award]] [[1987 in literature|in 1987]]. It was also nominated for [[1986 in literature|the 1986]] [[Nebula Award]], the 1986 [[Booker Prize]], and the 1987 [[Prometheus Award]]. It has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen.
 
  
 
''The Handmaid's Tale'' comprises a number of social critiques. Atwood sought to demonstrate that extremist views might result in fundamentalist [[totalitarianism]].  The novel presents a dystopian vision of life in the [[United States]] in the period projecting forward from the time of the writing (1985), covering the [[backlash]] against [[feminism]]. This critique is most clearly seen in both Offred's memories of the slow social transformation towards theocratic [[fascism]] and in the [[ideology]] of the Aunts.
 
''The Handmaid's Tale'' comprises a number of social critiques. Atwood sought to demonstrate that extremist views might result in fundamentalist [[totalitarianism]].  The novel presents a dystopian vision of life in the [[United States]] in the period projecting forward from the time of the writing (1985), covering the [[backlash]] against [[feminism]]. This critique is most clearly seen in both Offred's memories of the slow social transformation towards theocratic [[fascism]] and in the [[ideology]] of the Aunts.
  
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Immediately following the overthrow of the government, but before the new order had completely changed things, women begin to lose whatever freedoms they had previously had.  
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Immediately following the overthrow of the government, but before the new order had completely changed things, women begin to lose whatever freedoms they had previously enjoyed. Atwood pictures [[revivalism]] as [[counter-revolutionary]], opposed to the revolutionary doctrine espoused by Offred's mother and Moira, which sought to break down gender categories. A [[Marxism|Marxist]] reading of [[fascism]] explains it as the backlash of the right after a failed revolution. Atwood explores this Marxist reading and translates its analysis into the structure of a religious and gender revolution. "From each according to her ability… to each according to his needs,"<ref>Margaret Atwood, ''The Handmaid's Tale'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986, ISBN 9780395404256), 127.</ref> echoes the famous phrase of [[Marx]]'s in the [[Communist Manifesto]], "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his need]]." Atwood translates the statement on class and society into one about gender roles.
  
 
Atwood mocks those who talk of "[[traditional values]]" and suggest that women should return to being housewives. Serena Joy, formerly a television preacher with a high public profile, has been forced to give up her career and is clearly not content. The religious and social ideology she has spent her entire long career publicly promoting has, in the end, destroyed her own life and happiness.
 
Atwood mocks those who talk of "[[traditional values]]" and suggest that women should return to being housewives. Serena Joy, formerly a television preacher with a high public profile, has been forced to give up her career and is clearly not content. The religious and social ideology she has spent her entire long career publicly promoting has, in the end, destroyed her own life and happiness.
  
 
However, Atwood also offers a critique of [[second-wave feminism|contemporary feminism]]. By working [[anti-pornography|against pornography]], feminists in the early 1980s opened themselves up to criticism that they favored [[censorship]]. Anti-pornography feminist activists such as [[Andrea Dworkin]] and [[Catharine MacKinnon]] made alliances with the [[Christian right|religious right]], despite the warnings of [[sex-positive feminism|sex-positive feminists]]. Atwood warns that the consequences of such an alliance may end up empowering feminists' worst enemies. She also suggests, through descriptions of the narrator's feminist mother [[book burning|burning books]], that contemporary feminism was becoming overly rigid and adopting the same tactics as the religious right.
 
However, Atwood also offers a critique of [[second-wave feminism|contemporary feminism]]. By working [[anti-pornography|against pornography]], feminists in the early 1980s opened themselves up to criticism that they favored [[censorship]]. Anti-pornography feminist activists such as [[Andrea Dworkin]] and [[Catharine MacKinnon]] made alliances with the [[Christian right|religious right]], despite the warnings of [[sex-positive feminism|sex-positive feminists]]. Atwood warns that the consequences of such an alliance may end up empowering feminists' worst enemies. She also suggests, through descriptions of the narrator's feminist mother [[book burning|burning books]], that contemporary feminism was becoming overly rigid and adopting the same tactics as the religious right.
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===Critique of the religious right===
 
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Most notably, Atwood critiques modern [[religious movement]]s, specifically fundamentalist Christianity in the United States, with a reference to [[Islamic fundamentalism]] such as [[Islam in Iran|the theocracy founded in Iran in 1979]]. An American [[religious revival]] in the mid-1970s had led to the growth of the [[Christian right|religious right]] through [[televangelism]]. [[Jimmy Carter]], [[President of the United States of America|then president]], had avowed his renewed and reaffirmed Christianity; [[Ronald Reagan]] was elected as his successor using a specifically Christian discourse.
 
−
 
−
In ''A Handmaid's Tale'' Atwood pictures [[revivalism]] as [[counter-revolutionary]], opposed to the revolutionary doctrine espoused by Offred's mother and Moira, which sought to break down gender categories. A [[Marxism|Marxist]] reading of [[fascism]] explains it as the backlash of the right after a failed revolution. Atwood explores this Marxist reading and translates its analysis into the structure of a religious and gender revolution. "From each according to her ability… to each according to his needs,"<ref>Margaret Atwood, ''The Handmaid's Tale'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986, ISBN 9780395404256), 127.</ref> echoes the famous phrase of [[Marx]]'s in the [[Communist Manifesto]], "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his need]]." Atwood translates the statement on class and society into one about gender roles.
 
−
 
−
===Critical reception===
 
−
''[[The Economist]]'' called her a "scintillating wordsmith" and an "expert literary critic," but commented that her logic doesn't match her prose in ''[[Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth]]''.<ref>''The Economist,'' [http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12414948 Payback.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> Atwood claims that this conception is ingrained in the human psyche, manifest as it is in early historical peoples, who matched their conceptions of debt with those of justice as typically exemplified by a female deity. Atwood holds that, with the rise of [[Ancient Greece]], and especially the installation of the court system detailed in [[Aeschylus]]'s ''[[Oresteia]],'' this deity was replaced by a more thorough conception of debt.
 
  
 
==Political involvement==
 
==Political involvement==
−
Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being [[left wing]], she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a [[Red Tory]].<ref>''Mother Jones,'' [http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/1997/07/visions.html "Margaret Atwood: The activist author of Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale discusses the politics of art and the art of the con."] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> Atwood and her partner [[Graeme Gibson]] are currently 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. In the [[Canadian federal election, 2008|2008 federal election]] she attended a rally for the [[Bloc Québécois]], a Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.<ref>CBC, [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/10/03/duceppe-to.html Atwood backs Bloc on arts defence.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> In a ''Globe and Mail'' editorial, she urged Canadians to vote for any other party to stop a Conservative majority.<ref>Margaret, Atwood. [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081006.WAtwood07_PTR/BNStory/politics Anything but a Harper majority,] ''Globe and Mail''. Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref>
+
Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being [[left wing]], she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a [[Red Tory]].<ref>
 +
Marilyn Berlin Snell, [https://www.motherjones.com/media/1997/07/margaret-atwood/ Margaret Atwood] ''Mother Jones'', July/August 1997. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref> Atwood and her partner [[Graeme Gibson]] are currently 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. In the [[Canadian federal election, 2008|2008 federal election]] she attended a rally for the [[Bloc Québécois]], a Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.<ref>[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/10/03/duceppe-to.html Atwood backs Bloc on arts defence] ''CBC'', October 4, 2008. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref>  
  
−
Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,<ref>Canadian Living, [http://www.canadianliving.com/life/community/interview_with_author_margaret_atwood.php Interview with author Margaret Atwood.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> such as suggesting that gas-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 partner also use a [[hybrid car]] when they are in the city.  
+
Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,<ref>Kat Tancock, [https://www.canadianliving.com/life-and-relationships/community-and-currents-events/article/interview-with-author-margaret-atwood Interview with author Margaret Atwood] ''Canadian Living'', May 29, 2011. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref> such as suggesting that gas-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 partner also use a [[hybrid car]] when they are in the city.
−
 
 
−
During the debate in 1987 over a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, Atwood came out against the deal. Her opposition included an essay she wrote opposing the agreement.<ref>Margaret Atwood, [http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:Ade9DPXEVw0J:www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/canada/handmaid.html+%22Margaret+Atwood%22+%22Free+trade%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=ca The Handmaid's Tale.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref>
 
  
 
==Legacy==
 
==Legacy==
−
Atwood is a winner of the [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]] and [[Prince of Asturias Awards|Prince of Asturias]] award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the [[Booker Prize]] five times, winning once, 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.<ref>Award Annals, [http://www.awardannals.com/wiki/Honor_roll:Fiction_authors Honor roll:Fiction authors.] Retrieved December 12, 2008.</ref> While she is best known for her work as a novelist, her [[poetry]] is noteworthy.<ref name="Holcombe">Garan Holcombe, "Margaret Atwood," ''Contemporary Writers'' (London: British Arts Council, 2005).</ref>
+
Atwood is a winner of more than 5 awards in Canada and internationally.  These include the [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]] and [[Prince of Asturias Awards|Prince of Asturias]] award for Literature.  She has been shortlisted for the [[Booker Prize]] five times, winning once, 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.<ref>[http://www.awardannals.com/v/Honor_roll:Fiction_authors Honor roll: Fiction authors] ''Award Annals''. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref> While she is best known for her work as a novelist, her [[poetry]] is also noteworthy.
  
 
Atwood has been vice-chairman of the [[Writers' Union of Canada]] and president of [[International PEN]] (1984-1986), an international group committed to promoting freedom of expression and freeing writers who are political prisoners. Elected a Senior Fellow of [[Massey College]] at the University of Toronto, she has sixteen [[honorary degree]]s, including a doctorate from Victoria College (1987), and was inducted into [[Canada's Walk of Fame]] in 2001. Her literary papers are housed at the University of Toronto's [[Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library]].
 
Atwood has been vice-chairman of the [[Writers' Union of Canada]] and president of [[International PEN]] (1984-1986), an international group committed to promoting freedom of expression and freeing writers who are political prisoners. Elected a Senior Fellow of [[Massey College]] at the University of Toronto, she has sixteen [[honorary degree]]s, including a doctorate from Victoria College (1987), and was inducted into [[Canada's Walk of Fame]] in 2001. Her literary papers are housed at the University of Toronto's [[Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library]].
Line 79: Line 99:
  
 
=== Awards ===
 
=== Awards ===
−
*[http://www.fundacionprincipedeasturias.org/ing/01/noticia770.html 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters] Retrieved December 12, 2008.
+
Atwood has received international recognition through numerous awards and honorary degrees:
−
*[http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=53 Order of Canada Citation] Retrieved December 12, 2008.
+
* [[Governor General's Award]], 1966, 1985<ref>[https://ggbooks.ca/past-winners-and-finalists Past Winners and Finalists] ''Governor General’s Literary Awards''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Guggenheim fellowship]], 1981<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110629115029/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/11.08/08-atwood.html How Atwood became a writer:] ''Harvard University Gazette'', November 8, 2001. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref>
 +
* [[Los Angeles Times Fiction Award]], 1986<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130405013402/http://events.latimes.com/bookprizes/previous-winners/winners-by-award/ LA Times Book Prize winners] ''Los Angeles Times'', April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Nebula Award]], 1986 and [[Prometheus Award]], 1987 nominations, both science fiction awards.<ref>[https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nominees/margaret-atwood/ Margaret Atwood] ''Nebula Awards'' Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref><ref>[http://lfs.org/novel_nominees.shtml Prometheus Award for Best Novel – Nominees] ''Libertarian Future Society''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction]], 1987<ref name=Arthur>Dianne Rinehart, [https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/01/24/arthur_c_clarke_move_raises_question_of_scifi_author_equality.html Arthur C. Clarke move raises questions of sci-fi author equality] ''Toronto Star'', January 24, 2014. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Trillium Book Award]], 1991, 1993, 1995<ref>[http://www.omdc.on.ca/book/trillium_book_award/trillium_book_award_winners.htm Trillium Book Award Winners]. Retrieved December 18, 2019.</ref>
 +
* Government of France's Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1994<ref name=Awards>[http://margaretatwood.ca/awards-recognitions/ Awards and Recognitions] ''Margaret Atwood Website''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Helmerich Award]], 1999, by the [[Tulsa City-County Library|Tulsa Library Trust]].<ref>[http://helmerichaward.org/winners/1999_margaret-atwood.php Margaret Atwood] ''Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award'', Tulsa Library Trust. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Booker Prize]], 2000<ref name=Booker>[https://web.archive.org/web/20131225215742/http://www.themanbookerprize.com/people/margaret-atwood Margaret Atwood] ''The Man Booker Prize''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, 2007<ref>[https://kenyonreview.org/programs/kenyon-review-award-for-literary-achievement/margaret-atwood/ Margaret Atwood] ''Kenyon Review''. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref>
 +
* [[Prince of Asturias Award]] for Literature, 2008<ref>[https://www.fpa.es/en/princess-of-asturias-awards/laureates/2008-margaret-atwood.html Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2008] ''Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2008''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Nelly Sachs Prize]], Germany, 2009<ref>[https://www.dortmund.de/de/freizeit_und_kultur/kulturbuero/kulturpreise/nellysachspreis/ Nelly-Sachs-Preis] ''City of Dortmund''. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Dan David Prize]], Israel, 2010<ref>[https://www.dandavidprize.org/media-events/in-the-news/603-margaret-atwood-talks-about-nobel-prizewinner-alice-munro Margaret Atwood Talks About Nobel Prizewinner Alice Munro] ''The Guardian'', December 11, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal]], Canada, 2012<ref>[https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/diamond-jubilee-gala-toasts-exceptional-canadians-1.1226414 Diamond Jubilee Gala toasts exceptional Canadians] ''Canadian Broadcasting Corporation'', June 18, 2012. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Los Angeles Times Book Prize]] "Innovator's Award," 2012<ref>[https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-los-angeles-times-book-prize-winners-20130419-story.html Announcing the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners] ''Los Angeles Times'', April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* Gold medal of the [[Royal Canadian Geographical Society]], 2015<ref>[http://www.rcgs.org/awards/gold_medal/winner_gold2015.asp Gold Medal 2015 Recipients – Dr. Jacob Verhoef, Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood] ''Royal Canadian Geographical Society''. Retrieved December 16, 2019. </ref>
 +
* [[Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings]], Macedonia, 2016<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20160405222803/http://www.svp.org.mk/archives/6123?lang=en Margaret Atwood is laureate of the “Golden Wreath” Award for 2016] ''Struga Poetry Evenings'', March 21, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Franz Kafka Prize]], Czech Republic, 2017<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20170702113145/http://franzkafka-soc.cz/uploads/docs/2017/05/Cena%20Franze%20Kafky%202017%20TZ%20ENG.pdf The Franz Kafka International Literary Prize 2017], May 29, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Peace Prize of the German Book Trade]], Germany, 2017<ref>[https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/margaret-atwood-erhaelt-friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels-a-1151911.html Margaret Atwood erhält Friedenspreis] ''Spiegel online'', June 13, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
 +
* [[Companion of Honour]], 2019<ref>[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/767769/DSO_NY19_CH___BE_HMTQ.pdf Dr Margaret Eleanor ATWOOD, Canadian Author. For services to literature], 2019. Retrieved December 16, 2019.</ref>
  
 
==Bibliography==  
 
==Bibliography==  
Line 169: Line 208:
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
−
*Atwood, Maragaret. ''The Handmaid's Tale''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. ISBN 9780395404256.
+
*Atwood, Maragaret. ''The Handmaid's Tale''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. ISBN 9780395404256
−
*Carrington de Papp, I. ''Margaret Atwood and Her Works''. Toronto: EWC, 1985. ISBN 9780920763254.
+
*Atwood, Margaret. ''In Other Worlds : SF and the Human Imagination''. Anchor, 2012. ISBN 978-0307741769
−
*Cooke, N. ''Margaret Atwood: A Biography''. Toronto: ECW, 1998. ISBN 9781550223088.
+
*Atwood, Margaret. ''MaddAddam''. Anchor, 2014. ISBN 978-0307455482
−
*Hengen, Shannon and Ashley Thomson. ''Margaret Atwood:  A Reference Guide, 1988-2005''. Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow Press, 2007. ISBN 9780810859043.
+
*Carrington de Papp, I. ''Margaret Atwood and Her Works''. Toronto: EWC, 1985. ISBN 9780920763254
−
*Howells, Coral Ann. ''Margaret Atwood''. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. ISBN 9780312128913.
+
*Cooke, Nathalie. ''Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion''. Greenwood, 2004. ISBN 978-0313328060
−
*Howells, Coral Ann. ''The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-54851-9.
+
*Gault, Cinda. ''National and Female Identity in Canadian Literature, 1965-1980: The Fiction of Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Marian Engel''. Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0773426221.
−
*Rigney, B. ''Margaret Atwood''. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987. ISBN 9780389207436.
+
*Hengen, Shannon and Ashley Thomson. ''Margaret Atwood:  A Reference Guide, 1988-2005''. Lanham, MD:  Scarecrow Press, 2007. ISBN 9780810859043  
−
*Rosenburg H., J. ''Margaret Atwood''. Boston: Twayne, 1984. ISBN 9780805765991.
+
*Howells, Coral Ann. ''Margaret Atwood''. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. ISBN 9780312128913
−
*Sullivan, Rosemary. ''The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out''. Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 1998. ISBN 0-00-255423-2.
+
*Howells, Coral Ann. ''The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0521548519
 +
*Rigney, B. ''Margaret Atwood''. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987. ISBN 9780389207436
 +
*Rosenburg H., J. ''Margaret Atwood''. Boston: Twayne, 1984. ISBN 9780805765991
 +
*Sullivan, Rosemary. ''The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out''. Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 1998. ISBN 0002554232
 +
*VanSpanckeren, Kathryn, and Jan Garden Castro. ''Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms''. Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0809314089
 +
*Waltonen, Karma. ''Margaret Atwood's apocalypses''. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. ISBN 978-1443868822
  
 
== External links ==
 
== External links ==
−
All links retrieved September 17, 2014.
+
All links retrieved November 5, 2022.
  
−
*[http://www.owtoad.com/ Margaret Atwood's home page]
+
*[http://margaretatwood.ca/ Margaret Atwood] website
 
*{{isfdb name|id=Margaret_Atwood|name=Margaret Atwood}}
 
*{{isfdb name|id=Margaret_Atwood|name=Margaret Atwood}}
−
*{{contemporary writers|id=03C18N390512635243}}
+
*[http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm Margaret Atwood Biography] ''Luminarium''
−
*[http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm Luminarium Margaret Atwood] Research guides to novels and short stories
 
 
*[http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,943485,00.html Light in the wilderness] ''The Guardian''
 
*[http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,943485,00.html Light in the wilderness] ''The Guardian''
−
*[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=252 Poems by Margaret Atwood at PoetryFoundation.org]
+
*[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaret-atwood Margaret Atwood] ''Poetry Foundation''
 
*[http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_atwood.html Margaret Atwood with Bill Moyers on ''Faith and Reason''], PBS
 
*[http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_atwood.html Margaret Atwood with Bill Moyers on ''Faith and Reason''], PBS
 
*[http://www.canadianliving.com/life/community/interview_with_author_margaret_atwood.php June 2006 Interview] with ''CanadianLiving.com''
 
*[http://www.canadianliving.com/life/community/interview_with_author_margaret_atwood.php June 2006 Interview] with ''CanadianLiving.com''
−
*[http://wiredforbooks.org/margaretatwood/ 1986 interview with Margaret Atwood] by [[Don Swaim]] at ''Wired for Books''
+
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{{Man Booker Prize Winners}}
 
{{Man Booker Prize Winners}}
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{{credits|Margaret_Atwood|252895637|Margaret_Atwood|256586260|The_Handmaid's_Tale|257202007}}
 
{{credits|Margaret_Atwood|252895637|Margaret_Atwood|256586260|The_Handmaid's_Tale|257202007}}
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[[Category:Living people]]
 
[[category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
[[category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
[[category:Writers and poets]]
 
[[category:Writers and poets]]

Latest revision as of 03:53, 6 November 2022

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood - Foire du Livre de Francfort (37025811914).jpg
Margaret Atwood in 2017
Born November 18 1939 (1939-11-18) (age 84)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupation Novelist, Poet
Nationality Canadian
Writing period 1960s to present
Genres Romance, Historical fiction, Speculative fiction, Dystopian fiction
Notable work(s) The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, Surfacing
Official website

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, Order of Canada (November 18, 1939 - ) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist. Since 1961, she has published 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 books of non-fiction, eight collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and one graphic novel, as well as a number of small press editions in poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including the Man Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Governor General's Award, Franz Kafka Prize, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Atwood is also the inventor and developer of the LongPen and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television, increasing her exposure.

Many of her poems have been inspired by myths, and fairy tales, which were an interest of hers from an early age. Her early poems revealed her love of nature born of her early experiences in the wilderness of northern Quebec. Her later novels reveal her left-leaning sensibilities, including a distrust of religion and a critique of the excess materialism of consumer society. Her primary emphasis, however, was on the role of women in contemporary society. Titles like The Edible Woman and Surfacing use the metaphors of cannibalism and drowning to express the obstacles that prevent women from achieving success and happiness in contemporary society. Her best known work is The Handmaid's Tale which depicts a dystopian society governed by religious fundamentalists.

Biography

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.[1] 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 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.[1]

Atwood began writing at age six and realized she wanted to write professionally 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 (honors) and minors in philosophy and French.[1]

In late 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 formed a relationship 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. Atwood returned to Toronto in 1980, dividing her time between Toronto and Pelee Island, Ontario.

Career

1960s

Atwood's first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published as a pamphlet by Hawskhead Press in 1961, winning the E.J. Pratt Medal.[2] While continuing to write, Atwood was a lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, from 1964 to 1965, Instructor in English at the Sir George Williams University in Montreal from 1967 to 1968, and taught at the University of Alberta from 1969 to 1970.[3] In 1966, The Circle Game was published, winning the Governor General's Award.[4] This collection was followed by three other small press collections of poetry: Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); Talismans for Children, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); and Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1966); as well as, The Animals in That Country (1968). Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. As a social satire of North American consumerism, many critics have often cited the novel as an early example of the feminist concerns found in many of Atwood's works.[5]

1970s

Atwood taught at York University in Toronto from 1971 to 1972 and was a writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto during the 1972/1973 academic year.[3] A prolific period for her poetry, Atwood published six collections over the course of the decade: The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures for Underground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are Happy (1974), Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1976), and Two-Headed Poems (1978). Atwood also published three novels during this time: Surfacing (1972); Lady Oracle (1976); and Life Before Man (1979), which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award.[4] Surfacing, Lady Oracle, and Life Before Man, like The Edible Woman, explore identity and social constructions of gender as they relate to topics such as nationhood and sexual politics.[6] In particular, Surfacing, along with her first non-fiction monograph, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), helped establish Atwood as an important and emerging voice in Canadian literature.[7] In 1977 Atwood published her first short story collection, Dancing Girls, which was the winner of the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction.[3]

1980s

Atwood's literary reputation continued to rise in the 1980s with the publication of Bodily Harm (1981); The Handmaid's Tale (1985), winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award[8] and 1985 Governor General's Award[4] and finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize;[9] and Cat's Eye (1988), finalist for both the 1988 Governor General's Award[4] and the 1989 Booker Prize. Despite her distaste for literary labels, Atwood has since conceded to referring to The Handmaid's Tale as a work of science fiction or, more accurately, speculative fiction.[10][11] As she has repeatedly noted, "There's a precedent in real life for everything in the book. I decided not to put anything in that somebody somewhere hadn't already done."[12]

While reviewers and critics have been tempted to read autobiographical elements of Atwood's life in her work, particularly Cat's Eye,[13][3] in general Atwood resists the desire of critics to read too closely for an author's life in their writing.[14]

During the 1980s, Atwood continued to teach, serving as the MFA Honorary Chair the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, 1985; the Berg Professor of English, New York University, 1986; Writer-in-Residence, Macquarie University, Australia, 1987; and Writer-in-Residence, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 1989.[3] Regarding her stints with teaching, she has noted, "Success for me meant no longer having to teach at university."[15]

1990s

Atwood's reputation as a writer continued to grow with the publication of the novels The Robber Bride (1993), finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Award[4] and shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award,[16] and Alias Grace (1996), winner of the 1996 Giller Prize, finalist for the 1996 Booker Prize,[9] finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Award,[4] and shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize for Fiction.[17] Although vastly different in context and form, both novels use female characters to question good and evil and morality through their portrayal of female villains. As Atwood noted about The Robber Bride, "I'm not making a case for evil behavior, but unless you have some women characters portrayed as evil characters, you're not playing with a full range."[18] The Robber Bride takes place in contemporary Toronto, while Alias Grace is a work of historical fiction detailing the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. Atwood had previously written the 1974 CBC made-for-TV film The Servant Girl, about the life of Grace Marks, the young servant who, along with James McDermott, was convicted of the crime.[19]

2000s

Atwood at the 2015 Texas Book Festival

Novels

In 2000 Atwood published her tenth novel, The Blind Assassin, to critical acclaim, winning both the Booker Prize[9] and the Hammett Prize in 2000.[20] The Blind Assassin was also nominated for the Governor General's Award in 2000[4] and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001.[21] In 2001, Atwood was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.[22] Atwood followed this success with the publication of Oryx and Crake in 2003, the first novel in a series that also includes The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), which would collectively come to be known as the MaddAddam Trilogy. The apocalyptic vision in the MaddAddam Trilogy engages themes of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, and man-made disaster.[23] As a work of speculative fiction, Atwood notes of the technology in Oryx and Crake, "I think, for the first time in human history, we see where we might go. We can see far enough into the future to know that we can't go on the way we've been going forever without inventing, possibly, a lot of new and different things."[24] She later cautions in the acknowledgements to MaddAddam, "Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or bio-beings that do not already exist, are not under construction or are not possible in theory."[25]

In 2005 Atwood published the novella The Penelopiad as part of the Canongate Myth Series. The story is a retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope and a chorus of the twelve maids murdered at the end of the original tale. The Penelopiad was made into a theatrical production in 2007.[19]

In 2016 Atwood published the novel Hag-Seed, a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, as part of Penguin Random House's Hogarth Shakespeare Series.[26]

On November 28, 2018, Atwood announced that she would publish The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, in September 2019.[27] The novel features three female narrators and takes place fifteen years after the character Offred's final scene in The Handmaid's Tale. The book was announced as the joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize on October 14, 2019.[28]

Invention of the LongPen

In early 2004, while on the paperback tour in Denver for her novel Oryx and Crake, Atwood conceived the concept of a remote robotic writing technology, what would later be known as the LongPen, that would enable a person to remotely write in ink anywhere in the world via tablet PC and the Internet, thus allowing her to conduct her book tours without being physically present. She quickly founded a company, Unotchit Inc., to develop, produce and distribute this technology. By 2011, Unotchit Inc. shifted its market focus into business and legal transactions and was producing a range of products, for a variety of remote writing applications, based on the LongPen technologies and renamed itself to Syngrafii Inc.[29]

Atwood has written thematically diverse novels from a number of genres and traditions, including science fiction/speculative fiction, space opera, and Southern Ontario Gothic. She is often described as a feminist writer, as issues of gender often (but not always) appear prominently in her work. Her work has focused on Canadian national identity, Canada’s relations with the United States and Europe, human rights issues, environmental issues, the Canadian wilderness, the social myths of femininity, representations of women’s bodies in art, women’s social and economic exploitation, as well as women’s relations with each other and with men.[6] In her novel Oryx and Crake and in recent essays, she has demonstrated great interest in (and wariness of) unchecked biotechnology.

Her first collection of poetry was Double Persephone (1961). The Circle Game (1964), her second, won the Governor General's award for poetry. Of Atwood's poetry collections, the most well-known is perhaps The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), in which Atwood writes poems from the viewpoint of Susanna Moodie, a historical nineteenth-century Canadian pioneer on the frontier.

As a literary critic, she is best known as author of the seminal Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), which is credited with sparking renewed interest in Canadian literature in the 1970s. She also wrote several television scripts, The Servant Girl (1974) and Days of the Rebels: 1815-1840 (1977).

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is Atwood's best known work. A dystopian novel, it was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against the backdrop of a totalitarian pseudo-Christian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government in the near future. Sumptuary laws (dress codes) play a key role in imposing social control within the new society.

The Handmaid's Tale won the Governor General's Award for 1985, and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted numerous times for stage, screen and most recently television.

The Handmaid's Tale comprises a number of social critiques. Atwood sought to demonstrate that extremist views might result in fundamentalist totalitarianism. The novel presents a dystopian vision of life in the United States in the period projecting forward from the time of the writing (1985), covering the backlash against feminism. This critique is most clearly seen in both Offred's memories of the slow social transformation towards theocratic fascism and in the ideology of the Aunts.

Immediately following the overthrow of the government, but before the new order had completely changed things, women begin to lose whatever freedoms they had previously enjoyed. Atwood pictures revivalism as counter-revolutionary, opposed to the revolutionary doctrine espoused by Offred's mother and Moira, which sought to break down gender categories. A Marxist reading of fascism explains it as the backlash of the right after a failed revolution. Atwood explores this Marxist reading and translates its analysis into the structure of a religious and gender revolution. "From each according to her ability… to each according to his needs,"[30] echoes the famous phrase of Marx's in the Communist Manifesto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Atwood translates the statement on class and society into one about gender roles.

Atwood mocks those who talk of "traditional values" and suggest that women should return to being housewives. Serena Joy, formerly a television preacher with a high public profile, has been forced to give up her career and is clearly not content. The religious and social ideology she has spent her entire long career publicly promoting has, in the end, destroyed her own life and happiness.

However, Atwood also offers a critique of contemporary feminism. By working against pornography, feminists in the early 1980s opened themselves up to criticism that they favored censorship. Anti-pornography feminist activists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon made alliances with the religious right, despite the warnings of sex-positive feminists. Atwood warns that the consequences of such an alliance may end up empowering feminists' worst enemies. She also suggests, through descriptions of the narrator's feminist mother burning books, that contemporary feminism was becoming overly rigid and adopting the same tactics as the religious right.

Political involvement

Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being left wing, she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a Red Tory.[31] Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson are currently 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. In the 2008 federal election she attended a rally for the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.[32]

Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,[33] such as suggesting that gas-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 partner also use a hybrid car when they are in the city.

Legacy

Atwood is a winner of more than 5 awards in Canada and internationally. These include the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, 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.[34] While she is best known for her work as a novelist, her poetry is also noteworthy.

Atwood has been vice-chairman of the Writers' Union of Canada and president of International PEN (1984-1986), an international group committed to promoting freedom of expression and freeing writers who are political prisoners. Elected a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto, she has sixteen honorary degrees, including a doctorate from Victoria College (1987), and was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2001. Her literary papers are housed at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Atwood has also published short stories in numerous publications, including Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, Playboy, and many other magazines.

Awards

Atwood has received international recognition through numerous awards and honorary degrees:

  • Governor General's Award, 1966, 1985[35]
  • Guggenheim fellowship, 1981[36]
  • Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, 1986[37]
  • Nebula Award, 1986 and Prometheus Award, 1987 nominations, both science fiction awards.[38][39]
  • Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction, 1987[8]
  • Trillium Book Award, 1991, 1993, 1995[40]
  • Government of France's Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1994[21]
  • Helmerich Award, 1999, by the Tulsa Library Trust.[41]
  • Booker Prize, 2000[9]
  • Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, 2007[42]
  • Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, 2008[43]
  • Nelly Sachs Prize, Germany, 2009[44]
  • Dan David Prize, Israel, 2010[45]
  • Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Canada, 2012[46]
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize "Innovator's Award," 2012[47]
  • Gold medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, 2015[48]
  • Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings, Macedonia, 2016[49]
  • Franz Kafka Prize, Czech Republic, 2017[50]
  • Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Germany, 2017[51]
  • Companion of Honour, 2019[52]

Bibliography

Novels

  • The Edible Woman (1969)
  • Surfacing (1972)
  • Lady Oracle (1976)
  • Life Before Man (1979, finalist for the Governor General's Award)
  • Bodily Harm (1981)
  • The Handmaid's Tale (1985, winner of the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award and 1985 Governor General's Award, finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize)
  • Cat's Eye (1988, finalist for the 1988 Governor General's Award and the 1989 Booker Prize)
  • The Robber Bride (1993, finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Award)
  • Alias Grace (1996, winner of the 1996 Giller Prize, finalist for the 1996 Booker Prize and the 1996 Governor General's Award)
  • The Blind Assassin (2000, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize and finalist for the 2000 Governor General's Award)
  • Oryx and Crake (2003, finalist for the 2003 Booker Prize and the 2003 Governor General's Award_)
  • The Penelopiad (2005, longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award)

Atwood is scheduled to publish a new novel in 2009. The book's title was initially reported in some media as God's Gardeners, although Atwood later confirmed that this was not the intended title.

Poetry collections

  • Double Persephone (1961)
  • The Circle Game (1964, winner of the 1966 Governor General's Award)
  • Expeditions (1965)
  • Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein (1966)
  • The Animals in That Country (1968)
  • The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970)
  • Procedures for Underground (1970)
  • Power Politics (1971)
  • You Are Happy (1974)
  • Selected Poems (1976)
  • Two-Headed Poems (1978)
  • True Stories (1981)
  • Love songs of a Terminator (1983)
  • Interlunar (1984)
  • Morning in the Burned House (1996)
  • Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965-1995 (1998)
  • The Door (2007)

Short fiction collections

  • Dancing Girls (1977, winner of the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction)
  • Murder in the Dark (1983)
  • Bluebeard's Egg (1983)
  • Through the One-Way Mirror (1986)
  • Wilderness Tips (1991, finalist for the Governor General's Award)
  • Good Bones (1992)
  • Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994)
  • The Labrador Fiasco (1996)
  • The Tent (2006)
  • Moral Disorder (2006)

Anthologies edited

  • The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (1982)
  • The Canlit Foodbook (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)

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)

Non-fiction

  • Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972)
  • Days of the Rebels 1815-1840 (1977)
  • Second Words: Selected Critical Prose (1982)
  • Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995)
  • Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002)
  • Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982-2004 (2004)
  • Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose—1983-2005 (2005)
  • Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008)

Drawings

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

Wheel-show (1978-1981) for Times Magazine

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Margaret Atwood Luminarian. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  2. ↑ The Plutzik Reading Series Features Margaret Atwood The University of Rochester, March 12, 2007. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0809314089).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Past GGBooks winners and finalists Governor General’s Literary Awards. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  5. ↑ Nathalie Cooke, Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion (Greenwood, 2004, ISBN 978-0313328060).
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Coral Ann Howells, Margaret Atwood (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996, ISBN 9780312128913).
  7. ↑ Cinda Gault, National and Female Identity in Canadian Literature, 1965-1980: The Fiction of Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Marian Engel (Edwin Mellen Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0773426221).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Dianne Rinehart, Arthur C. Clarke move raises questions of sci-fi author equality Toronto Star, January 24, 2014. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Margaret Atwood The Man Booker Prize. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  10. ↑ Margaret Atwood, Aliens have taken the place of angels The Guardian, June 16, 2005. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  11. ↑ Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds : SF and the Human Imagination (Anchor, 2012, ISBN 978-0307741769).
  12. ↑ Sam Gillette and Kim Hubbard, Margaret Atwood on Why The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood on Why The Handmaid's Tale Resonates in the Trump Era: It's 'No Longer a Fantasy Fiction' People, May 5, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  13. ↑ Alice McDermott, What Little Girls Are Made Of The New York Times, February 5, 1989. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  14. ↑ Rebecca Mead, Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia The New Yorker, April 10, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  15. ↑ Reflected in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, Girlhood Looms as a Time of Cruelty and Terror People, March 6, 1989. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  16. ↑ 1993 Honor List James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  17. ↑ Women's Prize for Fiction 1997. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  18. ↑ Margaret Carroll, Margaret Atwood's New Book Explores Power's Duality Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1993. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Full Bibliography Margaret Atwood Website. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  20. ↑ The Hammett Prize: Past Winner, Nominees, and Judges International Association of Crime Writers. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Awards and Recognitions Margaret Atwood Website. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  22. ↑ Margaret Atwood Canada's Walk of Fame. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  23. ↑ Karma Waltonen, Margaret Atwood's apocalypses (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1443868822).
  24. ↑ Margaret Atwood on the Science Behind Oryx and Crake Science Friday. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  25. ↑ Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (Anchor, 2014, ISBN 978-0307455482).
  26. ↑ Adam Gopnik, Why Rewrite Shakespeare? The New Yorker, October 17, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  27. ↑ Margaret Atwood Will Write a Sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale' The New York Times, November 28, 2018. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  28. ↑ Alison Flood, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo share Booker prize 2019 The Guardian, October 14, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  29. ↑ Company History Syngrafii. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  30. ↑ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986, ISBN 9780395404256), 127.
  31. ↑ Marilyn Berlin Snell, Margaret Atwood Mother Jones, July/August 1997. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  32. ↑ Atwood backs Bloc on arts defence CBC, October 4, 2008. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  33. ↑ Kat Tancock, Interview with author Margaret Atwood Canadian Living, May 29, 2011. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  34. ↑ Honor roll: Fiction authors Award Annals. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  35. ↑ Past Winners and Finalists Governor General’s Literary Awards. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  36. ↑ How Atwood became a writer: Harvard University Gazette, November 8, 2001. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  37. ↑ LA Times Book Prize winners Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  38. ↑ Margaret Atwood Nebula Awards Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  39. ↑ Prometheus Award for Best Novel – Nominees Libertarian Future Society. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  40. ↑ Trillium Book Award Winners. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  41. ↑ Margaret Atwood Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, Tulsa Library Trust. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  42. ↑ Margaret Atwood Kenyon Review. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  43. ↑ Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2008. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  44. ↑ Nelly-Sachs-Preis City of Dortmund. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  45. ↑ Margaret Atwood Talks About Nobel Prizewinner Alice Munro The Guardian, December 11, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  46. ↑ Diamond Jubilee Gala toasts exceptional Canadians Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 18, 2012. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  47. ↑ Announcing the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  48. ↑ Gold Medal 2015 Recipients – Dr. Jacob Verhoef, Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  49. ↑ Margaret Atwood is laureate of the “Golden Wreath” Award for 2016 Struga Poetry Evenings, March 21, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  50. ↑ The Franz Kafka International Literary Prize 2017, May 29, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  51. ↑ Margaret Atwood erhält Friedenspreis Spiegel online, June 13, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
  52. ↑ Dr Margaret Eleanor ATWOOD, Canadian Author. For services to literature, 2019. Retrieved December 16, 2019.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Atwood, Maragaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. ISBN 9780395404256
  • Atwood, Margaret. In Other Worlds : SF and the Human Imagination. Anchor, 2012. ISBN 978-0307741769
  • Atwood, Margaret. MaddAddam. Anchor, 2014. ISBN 978-0307455482
  • Carrington de Papp, I. Margaret Atwood and Her Works. Toronto: EWC, 1985. ISBN 9780920763254
  • Cooke, Nathalie. Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion. Greenwood, 2004. ISBN 978-0313328060
  • Gault, Cinda. National and Female Identity in Canadian Literature, 1965-1980: The Fiction of Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Marian Engel. Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0773426221.
  • Hengen, Shannon and Ashley Thomson. Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007. ISBN 9780810859043
  • Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. ISBN 9780312128913
  • Howells, Coral Ann. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0521548519
  • Rigney, B. Margaret Atwood. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1987. ISBN 9780389207436
  • Rosenburg H., J. Margaret Atwood. Boston: Twayne, 1984. ISBN 9780805765991
  • Sullivan, Rosemary. The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out. Toronto: HarperFlamingoCanada, 1998. ISBN 0002554232
  • VanSpanckeren, Kathryn, and Jan Garden Castro. Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms. Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0809314089
  • Waltonen, Karma. Margaret Atwood's apocalypses. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. ISBN 978-1443868822

External links

All links retrieved November 5, 2022.

Man Booker Prize Winners for Fiction
1960–1969

P. H. Newby (1969)

1970–1979

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)

1980–1989

William Golding (1980) • 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)

1990–1999

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)

2000–2010

Margaret Atwood (2000) • Peter Carey (2001) • Yann Martel (2002) • DBC Pierre (2003) • Alan Hollinghurst (2004) • John Banville (2005) • Kiran Desai (2006) • Anne Enright (2007) • Aravind Adiga (2008) • Hilary Mantel (2009) • Howard Jacobson (2010)

2011–2020

Julian Barnes (2011) • Hilary Mantel (2012) • Eleanor Catton (2013) • Richard Flanagan (2014) • Marlon James (2015) • Paul Beatty (2016) • George Saunders (2017) • Anna Burns (2018) • Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

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