Margaret Atwood

2012/2013 Literature Mentor

Published in 2011

Margaret Atwood – novelist, poet, essayist, and literary critic – is a dominant figure in Canadian letters and one of the most esteemed and prolific writers of our time. Called a “scintillating wordsmith” by The Economist, she has written more than 50 volumes.

Writing has been a lifelong calling for the girl who spent half of each year in her country’s northern wilderness. “Writing was the only thing I wanted to do,” says Atwood, who penned her first poem at age six, and, in high school, declared her ambition to become a professional writer. Following undergraduate education at the University of Toronto, she began graduate studies at Harvard’s Radcliffe College where she received her master’s degree in 1962. By that time she was publishing in small literary magazines, of which she has remained a supporter. Four years later, her second book of poetry, The Circle Game, earned her the Governor General’s Award, at that time Canada’s highest literary honour, and set her on the path to greatness in many literary genres.

Atwood gained international renown with such widely read novels as The Edible Woman (1969), the seminal The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cat’s Eye (1988), Alias Grace (1996), and the Booker Prize-winning The Blind Assassin (2000). With Oryx and Crake, she returned to “speculative fiction”, which she defines as fiction about not-yet-real things that nevertheless could really happen. Her most recent novel is The Year of the Flood (2009), and her most recent non-fiction work is In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011).

Margaret Atwood is recognized as an environmentalist and social commentator, as well as a champion of young writers through her teaching, editing, online advice and non-fiction works. As a co-founder of iDoLVine.com, she is helping to promote literature through online reader events, including remote e-book signings. “A word after a word after a word is power,” says the consummate writer.