Person

Margaret Atwood

Canadian novelist and poet best known for The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian masterpiece exploring gender, power, and resistance.

Margaret Atwood
Nationality
Canada
Life
1939 – present
Roles
  • author

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian author born in Ottawa whose career spans over six decades. She is best known for The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian theocracy that has become a cultural touchstone for discussions of reproductive rights, authoritarianism, and female agency. The novel won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an acclaimed television series.

Beyond The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood has written numerous novels including Oryx and Crake, The Blind Assassin, and Alias Grace, as well as poetry collections, short stories, and essays. Her work frequently explores themes of power dynamics, identity, survival, and the relationship between individuals and systems of control. She is known for her intellectual rigor, dark humor, and meticulous research.

Atwood has been a prominent public intellectual and activist, particularly on issues of climate change, women's rights, and freedom of expression. She won the Booker Prize twice and the Governor General's Award multiple times. Her influence extends beyond literature into popular culture and political discourse, with The Handmaid's Tale becoming a symbol of resistance to authoritarianism and reproductive oppression.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist and poet born in Ottawa in 1939 whose six-decade career has made her one of the most influential contemporary authors. Best known for The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a dystopian masterpiece that won the Booker Prize and became a cultural symbol of resistance to authoritarianism and reproductive oppression, she has also written acclaimed novels like Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin. Her work explores power, identity, and survival with intellectual rigor and dark humor, and she remains a prominent public intellectual on climate change, women's rights, and freedom of expression.

Last updated 31 August 2026