Margaret Atwood

About Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. A prolific poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist, she is a winner of the Booker Prize, Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. Atwood is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, her poetry is noteworthy. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths, and fairy tales, which were an interest of hers from an early age. Atwood also published short stories in Playboy magazine.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Atwood is the second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy Killiam, a former dietitian and nutritionist. Due to her father’s ongoing research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of Northern Quebec and back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was 11 years old. She became a voracious reader of refined literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto and graduated in 1957.

Atwood began writing at age six and realised she wanted to write when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria University in the University of Toronto. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and minors in philosophy and French.