Margaret Atwood

Career overview

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on November 18, 1939, and was raised in Toronto. She graduated from the University of Toronto's Victoria College in 1961 and pursued a master's degree at Harvard in 1963. Following a teaching stint at the University of British Columbia, she achieved initial literary acclaim with her 1964 poetry collection, The Circle Game.

Her debut novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 and resonated with early feminist movements. It was followed by Surfacing in 1972, which became a Canadian literature mainstay. During the 1970s, Atwood maintained a prolific output that included six poetry volumes, three short-story collections, and bestsellers such as Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, and Bodily Harm.

In 1985, she published the novel The Handmaid's Tale, which depicts a bleak vision of the near future in the territory of the former United States, replaced by a totalitarian regime. She later wrote a continuation titled The Testaments, published in 2019, for which she received the Booker Prize. Throughout her career, Atwood has authored numerous novels, poetry, short stories, and essays, and has worked as a literary critic.