Margaret Atwood

From Freepedia

Margaret Eleanor "Peggy" Atwood CC, (born November 18, 1939) is a novelist, poet, literary critic, and a pioneer of Canadian women's writing. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and attended school at Victoria College in Toronto, where she completed her BA. She went on to graduate studies at Radcliffe College for one year, and Harvard University for three years. After living in various places in North America and around the world, she returned to Toronto, where she currently lives. She is married to the novelist Graeme Gibson; her daughter, Jess Atwood Gibson, was born in 1976.

Her writing often focuses on feminist issues and concerns, which she examines through multiple genres such as science fiction, Southern Ontario Gothic, comedy, and the ghost story. Some critics say her first novel, The Edible Woman, which examined female dissatisfaction, predates issues of second-wave feminism. She also has a reputation for her deep interest in Canada and Canadian fiction, a theme that shows up both in the settings and atmosphere of her fiction and in her non-fiction and edited work. She has also been associated with Canadian nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s.

Though widely known for her fiction, Atwood has also continually published poetry. Often her poems are epigrams. Techniques she has drawn on include internal rhyme, extended metaphor, as well as alliteration or assonance that is split up and put in separate lines to produce an echo effect. She ranks as a key figure in Canadian poetry, especially as one of Toronto's new voices in the 1960s, along with Gwendolyn MacEwen, Dennis Lee and Michael Ondaatje.

Many readers know Atwood for her tale of a future dystopia in the science fiction novel The Handmaid's Tale (made into a movie and an opera), or for her Booker Prize-winning novel The Blind Assassin.

Two of Atwood's novels have been chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads competition: The Handmaid's Tale, championed by former Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 2002 and Oryx and Crake, championed by Toronto City Councillor Olivia Chow in 2005. In addition, La servante écarlate, the French translation of The Handmaid's Tale, was included in the French version of the competition, Le combat des livres, in 2004.

In November 2004 in Toronto, Unotchit Inc., her company, demonstrated a "remote book-signing device" at an invitation-only presentation in Toronto. The device, also called the "Unotchit" (and pronounced "You-No-Touch-It"), will allow an author to remotely sign a book as well as interact via video and audio. She has said in interviews that the device will be available by 2006.

She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973 and was promoted to Companion in 1981. She has been a president of the Writers' Union of Canada, as well as International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking).

Bibliography

See also

• Canadian literature
• Canadian poetry

External links

• Margaret Atwood's home page
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Margaret Atwood at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Margaret Atwood at the Internet Book List
• Profile from The Guardian
• The Margaret Atwood Society home page
• January 1997 Interview with Salon.com
• Unotchit Inc. official website
• Atwood invents, signs, backs up with facts
• Commentary on Unotchit from Neil Gaiman
• Commentary on Unotchit from Neal Pollack
• 1986 Audio Interview with Margaret Atwood - RealAudio (30 min 14 s)
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.