Margaret Atwood

1939 –

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. She earned a BA from Victoria College, University of Toronto, and an MA from Harvard.

She is the author of over fifteen books of poetry, including Dearly (Ecco, 2020), The Door (Houghton Mifflin 2007); Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965-1995 (Virago Press Limited, 1998); and Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), which was a co-winner of the Trillium Award.

Among her novels are The Testaments (Nan A. Talese, 2019), winner of the Booker Prize; The Blind Assassin (Doubleday, 2000), which won the Booker Prize and the Dashiell Hammett Prize; and The Handmaid's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Also the author of short story collections, children's books, and nonfiction, Atwood's work has been translated into many languages and published in more than twenty-five countries. Among her numerous honors and awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Molson Award, the Ida Nudel Humanitarian Award, and a Canada Short Fiction Award. In 1986 Ms Magazine named her Woman of the Year.

Atwood has served as a Writer-In-Residence and a lecturer at many colleges and universities. She lives in Toronto.