Margaret Atwood

From New World Encyclopedia
Revision as of 16:57, 11 December 2007 by Laura Brooks (talk | contribs)
Previous (Marduk)
Next (Margaret Beaufort)
Margaret Atwood
Born: November 18 1939 (1939-11-18) (age 84)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Died:
Occupation(s): Novelist, Poet
Nationality: Canada
Literary genre: Romance, Historical fiction, Speculative fiction, Dystopian fiction
Magnum opus: The Handmaid's Tale
Influences: George Orwell
Website: www.owtoad.com

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, OC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. A prolific poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist, she is a winner of the Booker Prize and Arthur C. Clarke Award, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. Atwood is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history.[1]

Life

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Atwood was second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, a zoologist, and Margaret Dorothy Killiam, a former dietician and nutritionist. Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. She did not complete a full year of school until grade eight. She became a voracious reader of refined literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto.

Atwood began writing at age sixteen. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria University in the University of Toronto. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and minors in philosophy and French.

In the fall of 1961, after winning the E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately-printed book of poems, Double Persephone, she began graduate studies at Harvard's Radcliffe College with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at Harvard, for two 2-year periods, but never took a degree. She has taught at the University of British Columbia (1965), Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-68), the University of Alberta (1969-79), York University in Toronto (1971-72), and New York University, where she was Berg professor of English.

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

Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson are members of the Green Party of Canada and strong supporters of GPC leader Elizabeth May, whom Atwood has referred to as fearless, honest, reliable and knowledgeable. Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,[2], such as suggesting that 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 husband also use a hybrid car when they are in the city.

Work

File:Oryx and crake.jpg
Cover for Oryx and Crake

Atwood has written thematically diverse novels from a number of genres and traditions, including science fiction/speculative fiction,[3] 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 (Howells 163). 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).

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.

Though frequently identified with the left, Atwood has described herself as a Red Tory.[4] Among her more notable acts of activism, Atwood donated all of her Booker Prize money to environmental causes and gave up her house in France after Jacques Chirac resumed nuclear testing. An active member of Amnesty International, Atwood once promised a free subscription to its bimonthly reports to the next person who accused her of being too pessimistic; it is unknown who, if anyone, has collected.[citation needed]

She invented "The Long Pen," billed as "the world's first long distance signing device."[5]

Works

Novels

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

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)
  • "The Moment" from Morning in Burned House, online at CBC Words at Large
  • 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 1991 Governor General's Award
  • Good Bones (1992)
  • Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994)
  • The Tent (2006)
  • Moral Disorder (2006)

Anthologies edited

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

Other short stories

  • Death by Landscape
  • Rape Fantasies (1977)
  • Unearthing Suite (1983)
  • When it Happens (1983)
  • Freeforall (1986)
  • Homelanding (1989)
  • Daphne and Laura and So Forth (1995)
  • Half-Hanged Mary (1995)
  • The Labrador Fiasco (1996)
  • Shopping (1998)
  • Bread
  • Happy Endings

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
  • 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)

Drawings

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


See also

  • Canadian literature
  • Canadian poetry

Notes

  1. ↑ Honor roll:Fiction authors. Award Annals (2007-11-17).
  2. ↑ http://www.canadianliving.com/life/community/interview_with_author_margaret_atwood.php
  3. ↑ London, 17 June 2005, The Guardian: "Aliens have taken the place of angels (Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction", includes the line "I have written two works of science fiction or, if you prefer, speculative fiction."
  4. ↑ http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/1997/07/visions.html
  5. ↑ Holt, Karen, "The Long Pen Shortens the Distance", Publishers Weekly, pp. 12–27. Retrieved 2007-10-10.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

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

External links

Wikiquote-logo-en.png
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Scotiabank Giller Prize Winners

M. G. Vassanji (1994) • Rohinton Mistry (1995) • Margaret Atwood (1996) • Mordecai Richler (1997) • Alice Munro (1998) • Bonnie Burnard (1999) • Michael Ondaatje / David Adams Richards (2000) • Richard B. Wright (2001) • Austin Clarke (2002) • M. G. Vassanji (2003) • Alice Munro (2004) • David Bergen (2005) • Vincent Lam (2006) • Elizabeth Hay (2007)

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)

Persondata
NAME Atwood, Margaret Eleanor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Canadian Novelist, Poet
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

bg:Маргарет Атууд cs:Margaret Atwoodová da:Margaret Atwood de:Margaret Atwood el:Μάργκαρετ Άτγουντ es:Margaret Atwood eo:Margaret Atwood eu:Margaret Atwood fa:مارگارت اتوود fr:Margaret Atwood gl:Margaret Atwood ko:마거릿 애트우드 hr:Margaret Atwood is:Margaret Atwood it:Margaret Atwood nl:Margaret Atwood ja:マーガレット・アトウッド pl:Margaret Atwood pt:Margaret Atwood simple:Margaret Atwood sk:Margaret Atwoodová fi:Margaret Atwood sv:Margaret Atwood tr:Margaret Atwood Template:176509194

Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Margaret_Atwood&oldid=609618

Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Copyright Logo
Powered by MediaWiki