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Margaret Atwood Wikipedia

image:Margaret_Atwood.jpg|right|frame|Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor "Peggy" Atwood, Order of Canada|CC (born November 18, 1939) is a novelist, poetry|poet, literary criticism|literary critic, and a pioneer of List of Canadian writers|Canadian women's writing. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and attended school at Victoria University in the University of Toronto|Victoria College in Toronto, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts|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 Feminism|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 literature|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 (author)|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 Ministers of Canada|Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 2002 and Oryx and Crake, championed by Toronto City Councillor Olivia Chow in 2005. In addition, La servante ??carlate, the French language|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). She was nominated for the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005.


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Last Modified:   2005-12-19