Margaret Atwood

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

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. She was awarded the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association in 1987. [1] 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. She invented the "LongPen" billed as "the world's first long distance signing device."^[5]

Works

See also

• Canadian literature
• Canadian poetry

Notes

References

• 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 has a collection of quotations related to:

Margaret Atwood

• Margaret Atwood's home page
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Margaret Atwood at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Book List
• Margaret Atwood Speaker Profile at The Lavin Agency
• The Margaret Atwood Society home page
• Luminarium Margaret Atwood Research guides to novels and short stories
• Profile from The Guardian
• January 1997 Interview with Salon.com
• June 2006 Interview with CanadianLiving.com
• Unotchit Inc. official website
• Poems by Margaret Atwood at PoetryFoundation.org
• Commentary on Unotchit from Neil Gaiman
• Commentary on Unotchit from Neal Pollack
• 1986 interview with Margaret Atwood by Don Swaim at Wired for Books
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
• Order of Canada Citation
• Margaret Atwood's LongPen invention Atwood invents a device that allows her to sign books from anywhere in the world.
• Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry Atwood is a founding trustee.
• CBC Digital Archives - Margaret Atwood: Queen of CanLit
• Reading report: Margaret Atwood at Barnes & Noble from BookishLove.net (November 2006)
• [2] Long Pen
• Lesson plans for The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye at Web English Teacher
• Audio Interview from BBC4
• Margaret Atwood discusses her book Moral Disorder, online at CBC Words at Large (audio)
• Acceptance speech for The Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix 2007, online at CBC Words at Large (audio)