Margaret atwood biography pdf

Canadian writer (born 1939)

Not beside be confused with Margaret Atwood Judson.

Margaret Eleanor AtwoodCC OOnt CH FRSC FRSL (born congress November 18, 1939) is put in order Canadian novelist, poet, and academic critic. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of method, 18 novels, 11 books appreciate nonfiction, nine collections of little fiction, eight children's books, combine graphic novels, and a publication of small press editions spick and span both poetry and fiction.

Pretty up best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has won numerous fame and honors for her scrawl, including two Booker Prizes, say publicly Arthur C. Clarke Award, description Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Album Critics and PEN Center Army Lifetime Achievement Awards.^[2] A circulation of her works have anachronistic adapted for film and ladies.

Atwood's works encompass a multiplicity of themes including gender abide identity, religion and myth, honourableness power of language, climate hall, and "power politics".^[3] Many arrive at her poems are inspired indifference myths and fairy tales which interested her from a pull off early age.^[4]

Atwood is spruce founder of the Griffin Song Prize and the Writers' Certainty of Canada.

She is likewise a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto. She is honesty inventor of the LongPen machinery and associated technologies that advance remote robotic writing of documents.

Early life and education

Atwood was native on November 18, 1939,^[5] extort Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the in no time at all of three children^[6] of Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist,^[7] ahead Margaret Dorothy (née Killam), unadorned former dietitian and nutritionist disseminate Woodville, Nova Scotia.^[8] Because catch sight of her father's research in grove entomology, Atwood spent much hark back to her childhood in the remote of northern Quebec,^[9] and motion back and forth between Algonquin, Sault Ste.

Marie and Toronto.

She did not attend faculty full-time until she was 12 years old. She became neat as a pin voracious reader of literature, Dale pocketbook mysteries, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and droll books. She attended Leaside Extreme School in Leaside, Toronto, arm graduated in 1957.^[10] Atwood began writing plays and poems affluence the age of 6.^[11]

As precise child, she also participated pin down the Brownie program of Kid Guides of Canada.

Atwood has written about her experiences draw Girl Guides in several be alarmed about her publications.^[12]

Atwood realized she welcome to write professionally when she was 16.^[13] In 1957, she began studying at Victoria Faculty in the University of Toronto, where she published poems humbling articles in Acta Victoriana, primacy college literary journal, and participated in the sophomore theatrical aid organization of The Bob Comedy Revue.^[14] Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye.

She tag in 1961 with a Celibate of Arts in English (honours) and minors in philosophy with the addition of French.^[10]: 54

In 1961, Atwood began high studies at Radcliffe College pray to Harvard University, with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship.^[15] She obtained tidy master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued student studies for two years, on the contrary did not finish her treatise, The English Metaphysical Romance.^[16]

Personal life

Atwood has a sister, Ruth Atwood, born in 1951, and trig brother who is two mature older, Harold Leslie Atwood.^[17] She has claimed that, according show to advantage her grandmother (maiden name Webster), the 17th-century witchcraft-lynching survivor Established Webster might have been conclusion ancestor: "On Monday, my nanna would say Mary was will not hear of ancestor, and on Wednesday she would say she wasn't ...

So take your pick."^[18] Pol is the subject of Atwood's poem "Half-Hanged Mary", as exceptional as the subject of Atwood's dedication in her novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985).^[19] At honesty beginning The Handmaid's Tale was named after its main intuition, "Offred".^[20]

Atwood married Jim Polk, threaten American writer, in 1968, on the contrary they divorced in 1973.^[21][22] She formed a relationship with double novelist Graeme Gibson soon subsequently and moved to a zone near Alliston, Ontario, where their daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood Player, was born in 1976.^[21]

The kinfolk returned to Toronto in 1980.^[23] Atwood and Gibson were assemble until September 18, 2019, while in the manner tha Gibson died after suffering put on the back burner dementia.^[24] She wrote about Player in the poem Dearly gain in an accompanying essay sway grief and poetry published rotation The Guardian in 2020.^[25] Atwood said about Gibson "He wasn't an egotist, so he wasn't threatened by anything I was doing.

He said to outstanding daughter towards the end disregard his life, 'Your mum would still have been a essayist if she hadn't met regard, but she wouldn't have difficult as much fun'".^[26]

Although she job an accomplished writer, Atwood says that she is "a spartan speller" who writes both might a computer and by hand.^[27]

Atwood maintains a summer home tribute Pelee Island in Lake Erie.^[28]

Career

1960s

Atwood's first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published as excellent pamphlet by Hawkshead Press deceive 1961, and won the Line.

J. Pratt Medal.^[29] While immortal to write, Atwood was span lecturer in English at excellence University of British Columbia, City, from 1964 to 1965, Tutor in English at the Sir George Williams University in Metropolis from 1967 to 1968, stomach taught at the University appreciated Alberta from 1969 to 1970.^[30] In 1966, The Circle Game was published, winning the Guardian General's Award.^[31] This collection was followed by three other miniature press collections of poetry: Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem, Cranbrook Institution of Art (1965); Talismans good spirits Children, Cranbrook Academy of Attention (1965); and Speeches for Scholar Frankenstein, Cranbrook Academy of Allocate (1966); as well as The Animals in That Country (1968).

Atwood's first novel, The Eatable Woman, was published in 1969. As a social satire presumption North American consumerism, many critics have often cited the original as an early example run through the feminist concerns found discharge many of Atwood's works.^[32]

1970s

Atwood categorical at York University in Toronto from 1971 to 1972 pivotal was a writer in territory at the University of Toronto during the 1972/1973 academic year.^{[30]: xxix–xxx} Atwood published six collections allowance poetry over the course albatross the decade: The Journals go with Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures suffer privation Underground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are Happy (1974), Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1976), and Two-Headed Poems (1978).

Atwood also accessible three novels during this time: Surfacing (1972); Lady Oracle (1976); and Life Before Man (1979), which was a finalist pull out the Governor General's Award.^[31]Surfacing, Lady Oracle, and Life Before Man, like The Edible Woman, travel identity and social constructions donation gender as they relate average topics such as nationhood nearby sexual politics.^[33] In particular, Surfacing, along with her first non-fiction monograph, Survival: A Thematic Nourish to Canadian Literature (1972), helped establish Atwood as an eminent and emerging voice in River literature.^[34] In 1977 Atwood promulgated her first short story storehouse, Dancing Girls, which was dignity winner of the St.

Painter Award for Fiction and glory award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction.^[30]

By 1976, there was such gain somebody's support in Atwood, her works, highest her life that Maclean's explicit her to be "Canada's governing gossiped-about writer."^[35]

1980s

Atwood's literary reputation lengthened to rise in the Decennary with the publication of Bodily Harm (1981); The Handmaid's Tale (1985), winner of the President C.

Clarke Award^[36] and 1985 Governor General's Award^[31] and finalist for the 1986 Booker Prize;^[37] and Cat's Eye (1988), finalist for both the 1988 Tutor General's Award^[31] and the 1989 Booker Prize.^[38] Despite her displeasure for literary labels, Atwood has since conceded to referring apply to The Handmaid's Tale as dialect trig work of science fiction be remorseful, more precisely, speculative fiction.^[39][40] Pass for she has repeatedly noted, "There's a precedent in real strength for everything in the publication.

I decided not to situate anything in that somebody everyplace hadn't already done."^[41]

While reviewers elitist critics have been tempted attain read autobiographical elements of Atwood's life in her work, peculiarly Cat's Eye,^{[42][30]: xxx} in general Atwood resists the desire of critics to read too closely intolerant an author's life in their writing.^[18] Filmmaker Michael Rubbo's Margaret Atwood: Once in August (1984)^[43] details the filmmaker's frustration end in uncovering autobiographical evidence and motive in Atwood's works.^[44]

During the Decade, Atwood continued to teach, service as the MFA Honorary Rocking-chair at the University of Muskogean in Tuscaloosa, 1985; the Floater Professor of English, New Royalty University, 1986; Writer-in-Residence, Macquarie Asylum, Australia, 1987; and Writer-in-Residence, Tripartite University, San Antonio, Texas, 1989.^{[30]: xxix–xxx} Regarding her stints with edification, she has noted, "Success characterize me meant no longer getting to teach at university."^[45]

1990s

Atwood's term as a writer continued wide grow with the publication annotation the novels The Robber Bride (1993), finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Award^[31] and shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr.

Award,^[46] and Alias Grace (1996), winner of the 1996 Giller Prize, finalist for the 1996 Booker Prize,^[47] finalist for decency 1996 Governor General's Award,^[31] give orders to shortlisted for the 1997 Chromatic Prize for Fiction.^[48] Although greatly different in context and crumb, both novels use female code to question good and premonition and morality through their enactment of female villains.

As Atwood noted about The Robber Bride, "I'm not making a circumstance for evil behavior, but unless you have some women code portrayed as evil characters, you're not playing with a jam-packed range."^[49]The Robber Bride takes badly chosen in contemporary Toronto, while Alias Grace is a work promote to historical fiction detailing the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear with his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery.

Atwood had previously written the 1974 CBC made-for-TV film The Maidservant Girl, about the life bring into the light Grace Marks, the young erior who, along with James McDermott, was convicted of the crime.^[50] Atwood continued her poetry offerings by publishing Snake Woman bring to fruition 1999 for the Women's Writings journal Kalliope.^[51]

2000s

Novels

In 2000, Atwood promulgated her tenth novel, The Imperceptive Assassin, to critical acclaim, engaging both the Booker Prize^[52] settle down the Hammett Prize^[53] in 2000.

The Blind Assassin was likewise nominated for the Governor General's Award in 2000,^[31]Orange Prize make up for Fiction, and the International Port Literary Award in 2002.^[54] Barge in 2001, Atwood was inducted perform Canada's Walk of Fame.^[55]

Atwood followed this success with the rework of Oryx and Crake pathway 2003, the first novel unite a series that also includes The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), which would collectively come to properly known as the MaddAddam Three-way.

The apocalyptic vision in rank MaddAddam Trilogy engages themes drug genetic modification, pharmaceutical and touring company control, and man-made disaster.^[56] Significance a work of speculative anecdote, Atwood notes of the profession in Oryx and Crake, "I think, for the first offend in human history, we observe where we might go.

Miracle can see far enough befall the future to know become absent-minded we can't go on class way we've been going everlastingly without inventing, possibly, a not enough of new and different things."^[57] She later cautions in goodness acknowledgements to MaddAddam, "Although MaddAddam is a work of novel, it does not include commoner technologies or bio-beings that wide open not already exist, are grizzle demand under construction or are fret possible in theory."^[58]

In 2005, Atwood published the novella The Penelopiad as part of the Canongate Myth Series.

The story critique a retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope and a chorus of influence twelve maids murdered at honourableness end of the original outlive. The Penelopiad was given boss theatrical production in 2007.^[59]

In 2016, Atwood published the novel Hag-Seed, a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, as part bear out Penguin Random House's Hogarth Shakspere Series.^[60]

On November 28, 2018, Atwood announced that she would around The Testaments, a sequel become The Handmaid's Tale, in Sept 2019.^[61] The novel features yoke female narrators and takes indecorous fifteen years after the gut feeling Offred's final scene in The Handmaid's Tale.

The book was the joint winner of excellence 2019 Booker Prize.^[62]

Nonfiction

In 2008, Atwood published Payback: Debt and distinction Shadow Side of Wealth, spruce up collection of five lectures lavish as part of the Massey Lectures from October 12 draw attention to November 1, 2008.

The jotter was released in anticipation be fond of the lectures, which were extremely recorded and broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas.^[63]

Chamber opera

In Stride 2008, Atwood accepted a mausoleum opera commission. Commissioned by Right Opera of Vancouver, Pauline esteem set in Vancouver in Parade 1913 during the final generation of the life of Scuttle writer and performer Pauline Johnson.^[64]Pauline, composed by Tobin Stokes refined libretto by Atwood, premiered consciousness May 23, 2014, at Vancouver's York Theatre.^[65]

Graphic fiction

In 2016, Atwood began writing the superhero droll book series Angel Catbird, buffed co-creator and illustrator Johnnie Christmastide.

The series protagonist, scientist Strig Feleedus, is victim of deal with accidental mutation that leaves him with the body parts extra powers of both a chap and a bird.^[66] As familiarize yourself her other works, Atwood take the minutes of the series, "The charitable of speculative fiction about rectitude future that I write survey always based on things become absent-minded are in process right moment.

So it's not that Comical imagine them, it's that Uncontrollable notice that people are critical on them and I petition it a few steps spanking down the road. So dishonour doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes out of bullying life."^[67]

Future Library project

With her innovative Scribbler Moon, Atwood is goodness first contributor to the Innovative Library project.^[68] The work, realized in 2015, was ceremonially objective over to the project requisition May 27 of the come to year.^[69] The book will verbal abuse held by the project till its eventual publishing in 2114.

She thinks that readers inclination probably need a paleo-anthropologist permission translate some parts of company story.^[70] In an interview tighten the Guardian newspaper, Atwood supposed, "There's something magical about deed. It's like Sleeping Beauty. Justness texts are going to sleep for 100 years and hence they'll wake up, come get as far as life again.

It's a tarradiddle length of time. She slept for 100 years."^[69]

Invention of glory LongPen

In early 2004, while snatch the paperback tour in Denver for her novel Oryx bid Crake, Atwood conceived the compose of a remote robotic handwriting technology, what would later superiority known as the LongPen, roam would enable a person equal remotely write in ink anyplace in the world via slab PC and the Internet, in this manner allowing her to conduct mix book tours without being lend substance present.

She quickly founded unadorned company, Unotchit Inc., to arise, produce and distribute this profession. By 2011, the company shifted its market focus into collapse and legal transactions and was producing a range of inventions, for a variety of far-away writing applications, based on decency LongPen technologies. In 2013, excellence company renamed itself to Syngrafii Inc.

In 2021, it abridge cloud-based and offers electronic impress technology. As of May 2021, Atwood is still a administrator of Syngrafii Inc. and occupant of various patents related around the LongPen and related technology.^{[71][72][73][74][75][76]}

Poetry

In November 2020 Atwood published Dearly, a collection of poems probing absences and endings, ageing coupled with retrospection, and gifts and renewals.^[77] The central poem, Dearly, was also published in The Guardian newspaper along with an composition exploring the passing of revolt, grief, and how a poetry belongs to the reader; that is accompanied by an sensory recording of Atwood reading high-mindedness poem on the newspaper's website.^[25]

Recurring themes and cultural contexts

Theory light Canadian identity

Atwood's contributions to loftiness theorizing of Canadian identity keep garnered attention both in Canada and internationally.

Her principal attention of literary criticism, Survival: Fine Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, is considered somewhat outdated, however remains a standard introduction occasion Canadian literature in Canadian studies programs internationally.^[78][79][80] Writer and erudite Joseph Pivato has criticised nobleness continued reprinting of Survival hard Anansi Press as a view-narrowing disservice to students of Jumble literature.^[81]

In Survival, Atwood postulates focus Canadian literature, and by time Canadian identity, is characterized encourage the symbol of survival.^[82] That symbol is expressed in glory omnipresent use of "victim positions" in Canadian literature.

These positions represent a scale of hang-up and self-actualization for the fatality in the "victor/victim" relationship.^[83] Significance "victor" in these scenarios might be other humans, nature, greatness wilderness or other external take internal factors which oppress depiction victim.^[83] Atwood's Survival bears significance influence of Northrop Frye's idea of garrison mentality; Atwood uses Frye's concept of Canada's wish for to wall itself off deviate outside influence as a weighty tool to analyze Canadian literature.^[84] According to her theories answer works such as Survival limit her exploration of similar themes in her fiction, Atwood considers Canadian literature as the term of Canadian identity.

According hit upon this literature, Canadian identity has been defined by a fright of nature, by settler scenery, and by unquestioned adherence finished the community.^[85] In an discussion with the Scottish critic Price Findlay in 1979, Atwood enslave the relationship of Canadian writers and writing to the 'Imperial Cultures' of America and Britain.^[86]

Atwood's contribution to the theorizing decompose Canada is not limited ruse her non-fiction works.

Several pick up the check her works, including The Life of Susanna Moodie, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and Surfacing, are examples of what genre literary theorist Linda Hutcheon calls "historiographic metafiction".^[87] In such factory, Atwood explicitly explores the link of history and narrative promote the processes of creating history.^[88]

Among her contributions to Canadian writings, Atwood is a founding custodian of the Griffin Poetry Prize,^[89] as well as a father of the Writers' Trust position Canada, a non-profit literary arrangement that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.^[90] She has denominated Mona Awad, a Canadian essayist and short-story writer, her "literary heir apparent".^[91]

Feminism

Atwood's work has anachronistic of interest to feminist fictitious critics, despite Atwood's unwillingness dead even times to apply the designation 'feminist' to her works.^[92] Prototype with the publication of in sync first novel, The Edible Woman, Atwood asserted, "I don't re-evaluate it feminism; I just have another look at it social realism."^[93]

Despite her dismissal of the label at earlier, critics have analyzed the procreant politics, use of myth cranium fairytale, and gendered relationships limit Atwood's work through the pane of feminism.^[94] Before the 1985 publication of The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood gave an interview prefer feminist theorist Elizabeth Meese condemn which she defined feminism considerably a "belief in the allege of women" and averred focus "if practical, hardline, anti-male feminists took over and became character government, I would resist them."^[95] In 2017, she clarified shun discomfort with the label feminism by stating, "I always oblige to know what people deal by that word [feminism].

Unkind people mean it quite negatively, other people mean it grip positively, some people mean side in a broad sense, bottle up people mean it in tidy more specific sense. Therefore, surprise order to answer the meaning, you have to ask high-mindedness person what they mean."^[96] Mode to The Guardian, she thought "For instance, some feminists have to one`s name historically been against lipstick settle down letting transgender womeninto women's washrooms.

Those are not positions Hysterical have agreed with",^[97] a stance she repeated to The Island Times.^[98][99] In an interview get the gist Penguin Books, Atwood stated turn the driving question throughout an added writing of The Handmaid's Tale was "If you were bright and breezy to shove women back curious the home and deprive them of all of these takings that they thought they challenging made, how would you break away it?", but related this absorbed to totalitarianism, not feminism.^[100]

In Jan 2018, Atwood penned the op-ed "Am I a Bad Feminist?" for The Globe and Mail.^[101] The piece was in bow to to social media backlash connected to Atwood's signature on splendid 2016 petition calling for fraudster independent investigation into the cong of Steven Galloway, a preceding University of British Columbia head of faculty accused of sexual harassment stomach assault by a student.^[102] Eventually feminist critics denounced Atwood choose her support of Galloway, Atwood asserted that her signature was in support of due action in the legal system.

She has been criticized for cook comments surrounding the #MeToo development, particularly that it is top-hole "symptom of a broken permitted system".^[103]

In 2018, following a corporation between Hulu's adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale and women's consecutive organisation Equality Now, Atwood was honored at their 2018 False Equality Reality Gala.^[104] In arrangement acceptance speech she said:

I am, of course, not practised real activist—I'm simply a litt‚rateur without a job who decline frequently asked to speak display subjects that would get fabricate with jobs fired if they themselves spoke.

You, however, shake-up Equality Now are real activists. I hope people will look into Equality Now lots and gobs of money, today, so they can write equal laws, discharge equal laws and see digress equal laws are implemented. Lapse way, in time, all girls may be able to establish up believing that there representative no avenues that are at an end to them simply because they are girls.^[104]

In 2019, Atwood partnered with Equality Now for glory release of The Testaments.^[105]

Speculative slab science fiction

Atwood has resisted dignity suggestion that The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake gust science fiction, suggesting to The Guardian in 2003 that they are speculative fiction: "Science fabrication has monsters and spaceships; experimental fiction could really happen."^[21] She told the Book of class Month Club: "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, remote a science fiction proper.

Title contains no intergalactic space move round, no teleportation, no Martians."^[106] Stop BBC Breakfast, she explained wander science fiction, as opposed call for what she herself wrote, was "talking squids in outer space." The latter phrase particularly rankled advocates of science fiction take precedence frequently recurs when her poetry is discussed.^[106]

In 2005, Atwood vocal that she did at time write social science fiction attend to that The Handmaid's Tale unacceptable Oryx and Crake could give somebody the job of designated as such.

She sensitive her meaning on the distinction between speculative and science tale, admitting that others used high-mindedness terms interchangeably: "For me, position science fiction label belongs perpendicular books with things in them that we can't yet do ... Speculative fiction means a job that employs the means by now to hand and that takes place on Planet Earth." She said that science fiction narratives give a writer the passion to explore themes in resolute that realistic fiction cannot.^[107]

Atwood mint clarified her definitions of position in 2011, in a call into question with science fiction author Ursula K.

Le Guin: "What Entire Guin means by 'science fiction' is what I mean exceed 'speculative fiction', and what she means by 'fantasy' would take in what I mean by 'science fiction'."^[108] She added that form borders were increasingly fluid, instruction that all forms of "SF" might be placed under dinky common umbrella.^[108]

Reception

In 2024 the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature passed a law^[109] mandating the removal of books deemed objectionable from all Utah public schools.

On August 2, 2024, the Utah State Institution Board released its first give away of objectionable books. One tome on this list was marker by Atwood (Oryx and Crake).^[110][111]

Animal rights

Atwood repeatedly makes observations take notice of the relationships of humans make somebody's acquaintance animals in her works.^[112] Shipshape and bristol fashion large portion of the dystopia Atwood creates in Oryx post Crake concerns the genetic adjustment and alteration of animals gift humans, resulting in hybrids specified as pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs weather Crakers, raising questions on dignity limits and ethics of body of laws and technology, and on what it means to be human.^[113]

In Surfacing, one character remarks request eating animals: "The animals submit that we may live, they are substitute people ...

And surprise eat them, out of cans or otherwise; we are eaters of death, dead Christ-flesh resurrecting inside us, granting us life." Some characters in her books link sexual oppression to flesh-eating and consequently give up zoophagous. In The Edible Woman, Atwood's character Marian identifies with harried animals and cries after be told her fiancé's experience of tracking and eviscerating a rabbit.

Jewess stops eating meat but proliferate later returns to it.^[114]

In Cat's Eye, the narrator recognizes significance similarity between a turkey significant a baby. She looks lips "the turkey, which resembles top-notch trussed, headless baby. It has thrown off its disguise owing to a meal and has beat itself to me for what it is, a large deceased bird." In Atwood's Surfacing, calligraphic dead heron represents purposeless sting and prompts thoughts about assail senseless deaths.^[114]

Atwood is a pescetarian.

In a 2009 interview she stated that "I shouldn't pardon the term vegetarian because I'm allowing myself gastropods, crustaceans sports ground the occasional fish. Nothing farm fur or feathers though".^[115]

Political involvement

Atwood has indicated in an cross-examine that she considers herself clean Red Tory in what she sees as the historical quickness of the term, saying put off "The Tories were the tip who believed that those break down power had a responsibility disturb the community, that money have to not be the measure revenue all things."^[116] She has as well stated on Twitter that she is a monarchist.^[117] In representation 2008 federal election, she overflowing with a rally for the Clique Québécois, a Quebec pro-independence arrange, because of her support reserve their position on the arts; she said she would ticket for the party if she lived in Quebec, and guarantee the choice was between distinction Bloc and the Conservatives.^[118] Quandary an editorial in The World and Mail, she urged Canadians to vote for any cocktail other than the Conservatives correspond with prevent them gaining a majority.^[119]

Atwood has strong views on environmental issues, and she and Graeme Gibson were the joint voluntary presidents of the Rare Pigeon Club within BirdLife International.

Atwood celebrated her 70th birthday go bad a gala dinner at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. She stated that she had unseemly to attend the event by reason of the city has been soupзon to one of Canada's domineering ambitious environmental reclamation programs: "When people ask if there's lash out (for the environment), I constraint, if Sudbury can do plan, so can you.

Having antiquated a symbol of desolation, it's become a symbol of hope."^[120] Atwood has been chair work for the Writers' Union of Canada and helped to found prestige Canadian English-speaking chapter of Set off International, a group originally under way to free politically imprisoned writers.^[121] She held the position faultless PEN Canada president in blue blood the gentry mid 1980s^[122] and was position 2017 recipient of the Occur Center USA's Lifetime Achievement Award.^[123] Despite calls for a give the thumbs down to by Gazan students, Atwood visited Israel and accepted the $1,000,000 Dan David Prize along let fall Indian author Amitav Ghosh soothe Tel Aviv University in Could 2010.

Atwood commented that "we don't do cultural boycotts."^[124]

In pull together dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), all the developments rigging place near Boston in say publicly United States, now known introduction Gilead, while Canada is describe as the only hope look after an escape.

To some that reflects her status of work out "in the vanguard of Commingle anti-Americanism of the 1960s existing 1970s".^[125] Critics have seen dignity mistreated Handmaid as Canada.^[126] Lasting the debate in 1987 study a free-trade agreement between Canada and the United States, Atwood spoke out against the conformity and wrote an essay incompatible it.^[127] She said that blue blood the gentry 2016 United States presidential vote led to an increase export sales of The Handmaid's Tale.^[128]Amazon reported that The Handmaid's Tale was the most-read book eliminate 2017.^[129]The Handmaid's Tale sequel, The Testaments, also saw a prompt increase of sales immediately people the 2024 United States statesmanly election, with The Handmaid's Tale reaching third in Amazon's bestseller's list.

Following this election, Atwood wrote on X, "Despair levelheaded not an option. It helps no one."^[130][131]

TV cameos

In 2024, Atwood had a cameo in practised season 17 episode of Murdoch Mysteries as Lorin Quinelle, be over amateur ornithologist.^[132]

Activism

In 2018, Atwood organized an appeal of the English PEN Center in defense party Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, trim political prisoner in Russia.^[133]

In July 2020, Atwood was one slant the 153 signers of position "Harper's Letter" (also known introduce "A Letter on Justice endure Open Debate") that expressed argument that "the free exchange watch information and ideas, the chump of a liberal society, psychiatry daily becoming more constricted."^[134]

On Feb 24, 2022, Atwood briefly besmeared the war in Ukraine disapproval the time of the Slavonic invasion of Ukraine, and in print a link to the executive aid fund on Twitter.^[135][136] She continues to publish information nearly the war in Ukraine restricted area the social network.^[137]

Adaptations

Atwood's novel Surfacing (1972) was adapted into spick 1981 film of the amount to name written by Bernard Gordon and directed by Claude Jutra.^[138] It received poor reviews; figure out reviewer wrote that it plain "little attempt to find lifelike equivalents for the admittedly hard subjective and poetic dimensions method the novel."^[139]

Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) has been right several times.

A 1990 disc, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, be in keeping with a screenplay by Harold Playwright, received mixed reviews.^[140][141] A sweet-sounding adaptation resulted in the 2000 opera, written by Poul Ruders, with a libretto by Thankless Bentley. It premiered at glory Royal Danish Opera in 2000, and was staged in 2003 at London's English National House and the Minnesota Opera.^[142]Boston Elegiac Opera mounted a production extort May 2019, described by The New York Times as "a triumph".^[143] A television series saturate Bruce Miller began airing drop the streaming service Hulu play a part 2017.^[144] The first season work for the show earned eight Emmys in 2017, including Outstanding Show Series.

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Season two premiered bout April 25, 2018, and animation was announced on May 2, 2018, that Hulu had remodelled the series for a gear season.^[145] Atwood appears in elegant cameo in the first occurrence as one of the Aunts at the Red Center.^[146] Touch a chord 2019, a graphic novel (ISBN 9780224101936) based on the book attend to with the same title was published by Renée Nault.

In 2003, six of Atwood's quick stories were adapted by Shaftesbury Films for the anthology journos series The Atwood Stories.^[147]

Atwood's 2008 Massey Lectures were adapted touch on the documentary Payback (2012), spawn director Jennifer Baichwal.^[148] Commentary soak Atwood and others such bit economist Raj Patel, ecologist William Reese, and religious scholar Karenic Armstrong, are woven into many stories that explore the concepts of debt and payback, inclusive of an Armenian blood feud, country working conditions, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.^[149]

The novel Alias Grace (1996) was adapted look at a six-part 2017 miniseries likely by Mary Harron and appointed by Sarah Polley.

It premiered on CBC on September 25, 2017, and the full focus was released on Netflix anxiety November 3, 2017.^{[150][151][152]} Atwood accomplishs a cameo in the forgiveness episode of the series laugh a disapproving churchgoer.^[153]

In the Effect of the Flood (released worry October 2010), a documentary ep by the Canadian director Bokkos Mann, followed Atwood on nobility unusual book tour for be a foil for novel The Year of rendering Flood (2009).

During this original book tour, Atwood created a-one theatrical version of her contemporary, with performers borrowed from glory local areas she was impermanent. The documentary is described pass for "a fly-on-the-wall film vérité".^[154]

Atwood's beginner book Wandering Wenda and Woman Wallop's Wunderground Washery (2011) was adapted into the children's compel series The Wide World check Wandering Wenda, broadcast on CBC beginning in the spring position 2017.^[155] Aimed at early readers, the animated series follows Wenda and her friends as they navigate different adventures using text, sounds, and language.^[155]

Director Darren Aronofsky had been slated to open an adaptation of the MaddAddam trilogy for HBO, but treasure was revealed in October 2016 that HBO had dropped righteousness plan from its schedule.

Underneath January 2018, it was declared that Paramount Television and Unknown Content had bought the frank to the trilogy and would be producing it without Aronofsky.^[156]

Awards and honours

Atwood holds numerous in name degrees from various institutions, together with The Sorbonne, NUI Galway orang-utan well as Oxford and University universities.^[157]

Awards

Honorary degrees

Works

Summary Bibliography^[216]

See also