Margaret Atwood Biography
Margaret Eleanor Atwood CC OOnt CH FRSC FRSL is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor who was born on November 18, 1939.
| Name | Margaret Atwood |
| Net Worth | $20 Million |
| Date of Birth | November 18, 1939 |
| Age | 83 Years (2022) |
| Birth Place | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Profession | Poet, Writer |
| Nationality | Canadian |
Margaret Atwood Career
She has published 18 collections of poetry, 18 novels, 11 works of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, and two graphic novels since 1961, as well as a number of small press editions of poetry and fiction.
Hawkshead Press released Atwood’s first book of poetry, Double Persephone, as a booklet in 1961, receiving the E.J. Pratt Medal.
On November 28, 2018, Atwood stated that The Testaments, a follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, would be released in September 2019.
Three female narrators tell the story, which takes place fifteen years after Offred’s closing scene in The Handmaid’s Tale. On October 14, 2019, the book was named a joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize.
Two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General’s Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards are among the many distinctions and awards Atwood has received for her writing.
Her novels have been adapted for film and television in a multitude of ways.
Gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and “power politics” are all themes in Atwood’s writing.
Many of her poems are inspired by mythology and fairy stories, which she has been fascinated with since she was a child.
The Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada were founded by Atwood. She is also a Senior Fellow at Toronto’s Massey College.
She is the creator of the LongPen gadget and related technologies that allow for remote robotic document writing.
Margaret Atwood Background and Education
Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy (née Killam), a former dietician and nutritionist from Woodville, Nova Scotia, had Atwood as their second child in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
She graduated from Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, in 1957. At the age of six, Atwood began composing plays and poems.
She was also a Brownie with the Girl Guides of Canada when she was younger. In numerous of her publications, Atwood has written about her experiences as a Girl Guide.
When Atwood was 16, she recognized she wanted to be a professional writer. She enrolled at Victoria College, University of Toronto, in 1957, where she published poetry and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary newspaper, and performed in The Bob Comedy Revue, a sophomore theatrical institution.
Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye were among her lecturers. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) with majors in philosophy and French in 1961.
With a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, Atwood began graduate study at Harvard University’s Radcliffe College in 1961.
She graduated from Radcliffe College with a master’s degree (MA) in 1962 and went on to pursue PhD studies for two years, but her dissertation, The English Metaphysical Romance, was never completed.
Atwood has a sister, Ruth Atwood, born in 1951, and a brother who is two years older, Harold Leslie Atwood.
Mary Webster, a 17th-century witchcraft lynching survivor, claimed to be her ancestor. Webster is the topic of Margaret Atwood’s poem “Half-Hanged Mary” and the dedication in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).
Margaret Atwood Husband
In 1968, Atwood married American writer Jim Polk, but the couple separated in 1973. Soon after, she married fellow novelist Graeme Gibson and moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, with their daughter Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson, who was born in 1976.
