Margaret Atwood- A Brief Bio

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is one of Canada’s best-known writers, novelist, poet, and cultural activist was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been published in more than forty-five countries and translated in many languages. She began writing at the age five and resumed her efforts more seriously and her writing resurfaced in high school. Her favorite writer as a teen was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), who was famous for his dark mystery stories. She first came to public attention as a poet in the 1960s with her collections Double Persephone (1961), winner of E. J. Pratt Medal, and The Circle Game (1964), winner of a Governor General’s Award. She won the PEN Pinter Prize in 2016 for the spirit of political activism threading her life and works. She is the current Vice-President of PEN international. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writings and her works have also been adapted for film and television, increasing her exposure.

Atwood writes in an exact, vivid, and witty, style in both prose and poetry. Her writing is often unsparing in its gaze at pain and unfairness. Nature in her poem is a haunted one which is clearly Canadian wilderness, in it dangerously; man is the major predator of and terror not only to the “animals of that country” but also to himself. Atwood’s novels are sarcastic jabs at society as well as identity quests. Her contributions to the theorizing of Canadian identity have garnered attention both in Canada and internationally.

She is the inventor and developer of the Long Pen along with associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. Atwood is also a talented photographer and water colourist. Her paintings are clearly descriptive of her prose and poetry and she did, on occasion, designed her own book covers. She is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Writers’ Trust of Canada.