Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, essayist and literary critic. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, on 18 November 1939, she has written more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, criticism and graphic work, published in more than forty-five countries.

Her novels include The Handmaid's Tale (1985), which won the Governor General's Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and its sequel The Testaments (2019), a joint winner of the Booker Prize. She had won the Booker once before, in 2000, for The Blind Assassin; Alias Grace took the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy. Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam form her trilogy of speculative fiction.

Alongside the novels she writes short fiction, including Stone Mattress and Old Babes in the Wood, and poetry, including Dearly and Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems, 1961-2023. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has received the Franz Kafka Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She lives in Toronto.