Meet the Author
Margaret Atwood
Canadian · 1939–undefined · Novelist and poet
A fiercely intelligent chronicler of power and gender who imagines the futures we should fear.
3 StoryBites Editions1 Short story
Why read Margaret Atwood?
Atwood dissects how societies control bodies, especially women's, with icy wit and unsettling plausibility. Her speculative worlds are built entirely from things humans have already done. She writes about survival, complicity, and voice with a sharpness that has only grown more urgent.
A life in six dates
- 1939Born in Ottawa, Canada
- 1969Publishes her first novel, The Edible Woman
- 1985Publishes The Handmaid's Tale
- 2000Wins the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin
- 2019Publishes The Testaments, sharing a second Booker Prize
Themes across the collection
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
Speculative fictionShe builds dystopias only from history's actual precedents, which makes them bite.
FeminismHer work relentlessly examines who controls women's bodies and stories.
Canadian identityShe helped define a national literature and its wary, watchful voice.
Influence
Echoes of Margaret Atwood run through Naomi Alderman, Emily St. John Mandel, among many others.