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Margaret Atwood

18 November 1939 – present

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet and critic. Her work ranges from early poetry and the novel Surfacing to the speculative fiction of The Handmaid's Tale and the MaddAddam trilogy. She won the Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and shared it again in 2019 for The Testaments.

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Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Margaret Atwood.

Life events

Born in Ottawa, Ontario
18 November 1939

She was born in Ottawa and spent much of her childhood in the bush of northern Quebec and Ontario, where her father worked as an entomologist.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Birth ✓
Graduated from Victoria College, University of Toronto
1961

She took a bachelor's degree in English with minors in philosophy and French.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Earned a master's degree at Radcliffe College, Harvard University
1962

She studied at Radcliffe on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and began doctoral work she did not complete.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Won the Governor General's Award for the poetry collection The Circle Game
1966

The award brought her early national recognition as a poet.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Published her first novel, The Edible Woman
1969

The novel introduced the themes of consumption and identity that recur in her fiction.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Began her partnership with the novelist Graeme Gibson
1973 – 2019

The two lived together until his death in 2019 and had a daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
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Published The Handmaid's Tale
1985

The dystopian novel, written while she was living in West Berlin, became her best known work.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Won the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin
2000

The novel won the prize after several earlier shortlistings.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Completed the MaddAddam trilogy
2013

Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam set out a speculative account of biotechnology and collapse.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓
Shared the Booker Prize for The Testaments
2019

The sequel to The Handmaid's Tale shared the prize with Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other.

Source: en.wikipedia.org
Achievement ✓