Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction, but is best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1969), The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Her latest work is a book of short stories called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014). Her newest novel, MaddAddam (2013),is the final volume in a three-book series that began with the Man-Booker prize-nominated Oryx and Crake (2003) and continued with The Year of the Flood (2009). The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short fiction) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, a collection of non-fiction essays appeared in 2011. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth was adapted for the screen in 2012. Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Thrilling, sometimes comic, often absurd and entirely engaging, spinning sins into the territory of Elvis-themed escorts, stuffed-animal carnality and customizable sexbots... What keeps The Heart Goes Last fresh, as with the rest of Atwood's recent work, is that while it revisits earlier themes of her oeuvre, it never replicates. Rather, it reads like an exploration continued, with new surprises, both narratively and thematically, to be discovered... Margaret Atwood has become something nearly as fantastical as one of her storytelling subjects: a living legend who continues to remain fresh and innovative on the page.
-- Mat Johnson, The New York Times Book Review
[The Heart Goes Last] affords an arresting perspective on the confluence of information, freedom, and security in the modern age.
-- The New Yorker
Reviews of Oryx and Crake
Atwood has long since established herself as one of the best writers in English today, but Oryx and Crake may well be her best work yet... Brilliant, provocative, sumptuous and downright terrifying.
-- The Baltimore Sun
Her shuddering post-apocalyptic vision of the world... summons up echoes of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess and Aldous Huxley... Oryx and Crake [is] in the forefront of visionary fiction.
-- The Seattle Times
Reviews of The Handmaid's Tale
A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex... Just as the world of Orwell's 1984 gripped our imaginations, so will the world of Atwood's handmaid!
-- Washington Post Book World
The Handmaid's Tale deserves the highest praise.
-- San Francisco Chronicle
Videos featuring Margaret Atwood
The Creative Process with The Big Think
Margaret Atwood: On the Planet of Speculative Fiction
