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Margaret Atwood

Biography

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include CAT'S EYE, THE ROBBER BRIDE, ALIAS GRACE, THE BLIND ASSASSIN and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, THE HANDMAID'S TALE, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, THE TESTAMENTS, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published DEARLY, her first collection of poetry for a decade.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Margaret Atwood

Books by Margaret Atwood

by Margaret Atwood - Fiction, Short Stories

Margaret Atwood’s collection of 15 stories --- some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine --- looks deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love --- and what comes after.

edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston - Fiction

One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs, milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants --- some of whom have barely spoken to each other --- become real neighbors. In this DECAMERON-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, FOURTEEN DAYS reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

by Margaret Atwood - Essays, Nonfiction

In more than 50 pieces, Margaret Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This rollercoaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to Atwood’s views on the climate crisis, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.

by Margaret Atwood - Poetry, Poetry Collection

In DEARLY, her first collection of poetry in over a decade, Margaret Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature, and --- zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.

by Margaret Atwood - Dystopian, Fiction

More than 15 years after the events of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With THE TESTAMENTS, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

written by Margaret Atwood, art and adaptation by Renée Nault - Fiction, Graphic Novel, Science Fiction

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile. But Offred remembers the years before Gilead, when she was an independent woman who had a job, a family and a name of her own. Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.

by Margaret Atwood - Fiction

Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a “Tempest” like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge. After 12 years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his “Tempest” and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?

by Margaret Atwood - Dystopian, Fiction, Science Fiction

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed, and everyone gets a comfortable house to live in…for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger.

by Margaret Atwood - Fiction, Short Stories

Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, MORAL DISORDER, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists.

by Margaret Atwood - Dystopian, Fiction

Bringing together ORYX AND CRAKE and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD, this final book in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community and love. MADDADDAM combines adventure, humor and romance to create a moving and dramatic conclusion to this internationally celebrated dystopian series.

by Margaret Atwood - Essays, Literary Criticism, Science Fiction

In this collection of essays and lectures, Margaret Atwood illuminates her lifelong relationship with the literary genre of science fiction.

by Margaret Atwood - Science Fiction

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.