Margaret Eleanor Atwood
, CC, O.Ont, FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian author, poet, critic, feminist and social campaigner. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning once. [1]
While she may be best known for her work as a novelist, she is also an award winning poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. [2] [3]
Many of her poems have been inspired by myths, and fairy tales, which were an interest of hers from an early age. [4] Atwood has also published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, Playboy
, and many other magazines.
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MARGARET ATWOOD TICKETS
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Life
Born in
Ottawa,
Ontario, Atwood is the second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, an
entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy Killam, a former dietitian and nutritionist.
[5] 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 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 realized she wanted to write professionally 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.
In late 1961, after winning the
E.J. Pratt Medal for her privately printed book of poems,
Double Persephone
, she began graduate studies at Harvard's
Radcliffe College with a
Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued further graduate studies at
Harvard University for 2 years, but never finished because she never completed a dissertation on “The English Metaphysical Romance” in 1967. She has taught at the
University of British Columbia (1965),
Sir George Williams University in
Montreal (1967-68), the
University of Alberta (1969-79),
York University in Toronto (1971-72), and
New York University, where she was Berg Professor of English.
In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk, whom she divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship with fellow novelist
Graeme Gibson soon after and moved to
Alliston, Ontario, north of Toronto. In 1976 their daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson, was born. Atwood returned to Toronto in 1980. She divides her time between Toronto and
Pelee Island, Ontario.
In March 2008 it was announced by Atwood, via television hookup between Toronto and Vancouver, that she had accepted her first chamber opera commission. 'Pauline' will be on the subject of
Pauline Johnson, a writer and Canadian artist long a subject of fascination to Atwood. It will star Judith Forst, with music by Christos Hatzis, and be produced by
City Opera of Vancouver. 'Pauline' will be set at Vancouver, British Columbia, in March 1913, in the last week in the life of Johnson.
Critical reception
The Economist
called her a "scintillating wordsmith" and an "expert literary critic", but commented that her logic does not match her prose in
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
,
[6] a book which commences with the conception of debt and its kinship with justice. Atwood claims that this conception is ingrained in the human psyche, manifest as it is in early historical peoples, who matched their conceptions of debt with those of justice as typically exemplified by a female deity. Atwood holds that, with the rise of
Ancient Greece, and especially the installation of the court system detailed in
Aeschylus's
Oresteia
, this deity has been replaced by a more thorough conception of debt.
In 2003,
Shaftesbury Films produced an anthology series,
The Atwood Stories
, which dramatized six of Atwood's short stories.
Atwood and science fiction
The Handmaid's Tale
received the very first
Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best
science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year, in 1987. It was also nominated for
the 1986 Nebula Award, and the 1987
Prometheus Award, both science fiction awards.
Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that
The Handmaid's Tale
or
Oryx and Crake
were science fiction, insisting that they were
speculative fiction instead: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen" (Atwood to the
Guardian
). She told the
Book of the Month Club: "
Oryx and Crake
is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." and on
BBC Breakfast
explained that science fiction, as opposed to what
she
wrote, was "talking squids in outer space." The latter phrase particularly rankled among
advocates of science fiction, and frequently recurs when her writing (or
mundane authors' opinions of science fiction) is discussed.
[7]
Atwood has since said that she does at times write science fiction, and that
Handmaid's Tale
and
Oryx and Crake
can be designated as such. She clarified her meaning on the difference between speculative and science fiction, while admitting that others use the terms interchangeably: "For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do.... speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth", and said that science fictional narratives give a writer the ability to explore themes in ways that realistic fiction cannot.
[8]
Contribution to the theorizing of Canadian identity
Atwood’s contributions to the theorizing of Canadian identity have garnered attention both in Canada and internationally. Her principal work of literary criticism,
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
, is considered outdated in Canada but remains the standard introduction to Canadian literature in
Canadian Studies programs internationally.
[9]
In
Survival
, Atwood postulates that Canadian literature, and by extension Canadian identity, is characterized by the symbol of survival.
[10]
This symbol is expressed in the omnipresent use of “victim positions” in Canadian literature. These positions represent a scale of self-consciousness and self-actualization for the victim in the “victor/victim” relationship.
[11]
The "victor" in these scenarios may be other humans, nature, the wilderness or other external and internal factors which oppress the victor
[11]
Atwood’s
Survival
bears the influence of
Northrop Frye’s theory of
garrison mentality; Atwood instrumentalizes Frye’s concept to a critical tool.
[13]
More recently, Atwood has continued her exploration of the implications of Canadian literary themes for Canadian identity in lectures such as
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
(1995).
Atwood’s contribution to the theorizing of Canada is not limited to her non-fiction works. Several of her works, including
The Journals of Susanna Moodie
,
Alias Grace
,
The Blind Assassin
and
Surfacing
, are examples of what postmodern literary theorist
Linda Hutcheon calls “Historiographic Metafiction”.
[14]
In such works, Atwood explicitly explores the relation of history and narrative and the processes of creating history.
Ultimately, according to her theories in works such as
Survival
and her exploration of similar themes in her fiction, Atwood considers Canadian literature as the expression of Canadian identity. According to this literature, Canadian identity has been defined by a fear of nature, by settler history and by unquestioned adherence to the community.
Political involvement
Although Atwood's politics are commonly described as being
left wing, she has indicated in interviews that she considers herself a
Red Tory in the historical sense of the term.
[15] Atwood and her partner
Graeme Gibson are currently members of the
Green Party of Canada and strong supporters of GPC leader
Elizabeth May, whom Atwood has referred to as fearless, honest, reliable and knowledgeable. In the
2008 federal election she attended a rally for the
Bloc Québécois, a
Quebec separatist party, because of her support for their position on the arts, and stated that she would vote for the party if she lived in Quebec.
[16] In a
Globe and Mail
editorial, she urged Canadians to vote for any other party to stop a Conservative majority.
[17]
Atwood has strong views on environmental issues,
[18] such as suggesting that gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers be banned, and has made her own home more energy efficient by installing
awnings and skylights that open, and by not having
air-conditioning. She and her partner also use a
hybrid car when they are in the city.
During the debate in 1987 over a free trade agreement between Canada and the
United States, Atwood spoke out against the deal, including an essay she wrote opposing the agreement.
[19]
Works
Novels
- The Edible Woman
(1969)
- Surfacing
(1972)
- Lady Oracle
(1976)
- Life Before Man
(1979, finalist for the Governor General's Award)
- Bodily Harm
(1981)
- The Handmaid's Tale
(1985, winner of the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award and 1985 Governor General's Award, finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize)
- Cat's Eye
(1988, finalist for the 1988 Governor General's Award and the 1989 Booker Prize)
- The Robber Bride
(1993, finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Award)
- Alias Grace
(1996, winner of the 1996 Giller Prize, finalist for the 1996 Booker Prize and the 1996 Governor General's Award)
- The Blind Assassin
(2000, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize and finalist for the 2000 Governor General's Award)
- Oryx and Crake
(2003, finalist for the 2003 Booker Prize and the 2003 Governor General's Award)
- The Penelopiad
(2005, longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award)
- The Year of the Flood
(September 2009, Oryx and Crake followup)
Poetry collections
- Double Persephone
(1961)
- The Circle Game
(1964, winner of the 1966 Governor General's Award)
- Expeditions
(1965)
- Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein
(1966)
- The Animals in That Country
(1968)
- The Journals of Susanna Moodie
(1970)
- Procedures for Underground
(1970)
- Power Politics
(1971)
- You Are Happy
(1974)
- Selected Poems
(1976)
- Two-Headed Poems
(1978)
- True Stories
(1981)
- Love songs of a Terminator
(1983)
- Interlunar
(1984)
- Morning in the Burned House
, McClelland & Stewart (1995)
- Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965-1995
(1998)
- The Door
(2007)
Short fiction collections
- Dancing Girls
(1977, winner of the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction)
- Murder in the Dark
(1983)
- Bluebeard's Egg
(1983)
- Through the One-Way Mirror
(1986)
- Wilderness Tips
(1991, finalist for the Governor General's Award)
- Good Bones
(1992)
- Good Bones and Simple Murders
(1994)
- The Labrador Fiasco
(1996)
- The Tent
(2006)
- Moral Disorder
(2006)
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Anthologies edited
- The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse
(1982)
- The Canlit Foodbook
(1987)
- The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English
(1988)
- The Best American Short Stories 1989
(1989) (with Shannon Ravenel)
- The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English
(1995)
Children's books
- Up in the Tree
(1978)
- Anna's Pet
(1980) with Joyce C. Barkhouse
- For the Birds
(1990) (with Shelly Tanaka)
- Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut
(1995)
- Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes
(2003)
- Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda
(2006)
Non-fiction
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
(1972)
- Days of the Rebels 1815-1840
(1977)
- Second Words: Selected Critical Prose
(1982)
- Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
(1995)
- Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
(2002)
- Moving Targets: Writing with Intent, 1982-2004
(2004)
- Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose--1983-2005
(2005)
- Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
(2008)
Drawings
- Kanadian Kultchur Komix
featuring "Survivalwoman" in This Magazine
under the pseudonym, Bart Gerrard 1975-1980
- Others appear on her website.
Television scripts
- The Servant Girl
(1974)
- Snowbird
(1981)
- Heaven on Earth
(1986)
Libretto
- The Trumpets of Summer
(1964)
Audio recordings
- The Poetry and Voice of Margaret Atwood
(1977)
- Margaret Atwood Reads “Unearthing Suite”
(1985)
- Margaret Atwood Reading From Her Poems
(2005)
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Awards and honours
Atwood has won more than 55 awards in Canada and internationally, including:
Awards
- Governor General's Award, (1966, 1985)
-
-
- Booker Prize, 2000
- Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, 1986
- Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 1989
- Government of France's Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1994
- Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction, 1987
- Guggenheim fellowship [20]
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Honorary degrees
- Trent University, 1973
- Queen's University, 1974
- Concordia, 1980
- Smith College (Massachusetts), 1982
- University of Toronto, 1983
- University of Waterloo, 1985
- University of Guelph, 1985
- Mount Holyoke College, 1985
- Victoria College, 1987
- Université de Montréal, 1991
- University of Leeds, 1994
- McMaster University, 1996
- Ontario College of Art & Design, 2009
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Notes
- Honor roll:Fiction authors
- Margaret Atwood
- Margaret Atwood
- Oates, Joyce Carol. 'Margaret Atwood: Poet', ''New York Times'', May 21 1978
- http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm
- http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12414948
- Langford, David, "Bits and Pieces" SFX
magazine #107, August 2003
- Atwood, Margaret. "Aliens have taken the place of angels: Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction" ''The Guardian'', 17 June 2005]
- "Margaret Atwood: Branding an Icon Abroad" in Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- "A Certain Frivolity: Margaret Atwood's Literary Criticism" in Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact
- "Writing History from The Journals of Susanna Moodie to The Blind Assassin" in Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye
- Mother Jones:''Margaret Atwood: The activist author of Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale discusses the politics of art and the art of the con.'' July/August 1997
- [1]
- Margaret, Atwood. Anything but a Harper majority. ''Globe and Mail''. October. 6, 2008.
- Interview with author Margaret Atwood
- [1]
- http://www.answers.com/topic/margaret-atwood
References
- Honor roll:Fiction authors
- Margaret Atwood
- Margaret Atwood
- Oates, Joyce Carol. 'Margaret Atwood: Poet', ''New York Times'', May 21 1978
- http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/atwood/atwood.htm
- http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12414948
- Langford, David, "Bits and Pieces" SFX
magazine #107, August 2003
- Atwood, Margaret. "Aliens have taken the place of angels: Margaret Atwood on why we need science fiction" ''The Guardian'', 17 June 2005]
- "Margaret Atwood: Branding an Icon Abroad" in Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
- "A Certain Frivolity: Margaret Atwood's Literary Criticism" in Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact
- "Writing History from The Journals of Susanna Moodie to The Blind Assassin" in Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye
- Mother Jones:''Margaret Atwood: The activist author of Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale discusses the politics of art and the art of the con.'' July/August 1997
- [1]
- Margaret, Atwood. Anything but a Harper majority. ''Globe and Mail''. October. 6, 2008.
- Interview with author Margaret Atwood
- [1]
- http://www.answers.com/topic/margaret-atwood