Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is an acclaimed Canadian author and poet. Her latest novel The Testaments follows up the international best seller The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s award-winning novels have sold millions of copies around the world.

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Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is a work of what Atwood describes as speculative fiction. Atwood explains that speculative fiction differs from science fiction in that it tells stories that could happen. Her speculative fiction are not works of fantasy. Several decades later, The Handmaid's Tale is now considered a modern dystopian classic, and in 2019, Atwood's The Testaments brings the story of Gilead to a dramatic conclusion.

Before The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood wrote a number of poetry collections as well as novels including The Edible Woman (1969), Lady Oracle (1976), and Bodily Harm (1981). Other books by Atwood include The MaddAddam Trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam), Hag-Seed (2016), and the Booker Prize winning The Blind Assassin (2000). Many critics and readers describe Atwood’s gripping works of fiction as dystopian literature.

Atwood is the recipient of many awards and honours including the Governor General’s Award, a Companion of the Order of Canada, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction, and the Booker Prize. Atwood holds honorary degrees from many universities including Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Sorbonne.

Atwood earned an arts degree with a major in English and a minor in Philosophy and French from the University of Toronto where her poems were published in the Acta Victoriana literary journal. Atwood went on to attend Harvard’s Radcliffe College on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. Atwood graduated with a master’s degree in 1962. Atwood is married to fellow author Graeme Gibson, together they have a daughter, Eleanor. Margaret Atwood was born 18 November 1939 in Ottawa, Canada.