Margaret Atwood Popular Books
Margaret Atwood Biography & Facts
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television. Atwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics". Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto. She is the inventor of the LongPen device and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents. Early life and education Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the second of three children of Carl Edmund Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy (née Killam), a former dietitian and nutritionist from Woodville, Nova Scotia. Because of her father's research in forest entomology, Atwood spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec, and traveling back and forth between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. She did not attend school full-time until she was 12 years old. She became a voracious reader of literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories, and comic books. She attended Leaside High School in Leaside, Toronto, and graduated in 1957. Atwood began writing plays and poems at the age of 6. As a child, she also participated in the Brownie program of Girl Guides of Canada. Atwood has written about her experiences in Girl Guides in several of her publications. Atwood realized she wanted to write professionally when she was 16. In 1957, she began studying at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where she published poems and articles in Acta Victoriana, the college literary journal, and participated in the sophomore theatrical tradition of The Bob Comedy Revue. Her professors included Jay Macpherson and Northrop Frye. She graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours) and minors in philosophy and French.: 54 In 1961, Atwood began graduate studies at Radcliffe College of Harvard University, with a Woodrow Wilson fellowship. She obtained a master's degree (MA) from Radcliffe in 1962 and pursued doctoral studies for two years, but did not finish her dissertation, The English Metaphysical Romance. Personal life Atwood has a sister, Ruth Atwood, born in 1951, and a brother who is two years older, Harold Leslie Atwood. She has claimed that, according to her grandmother (maiden name Webster), the 17th-century witchcraft-lynching survivor Mary Webster might have been an ancestor: "On Monday, my grandmother would say Mary was her ancestor, and on Wednesday she would say she wasn't ... So take your pick." Webster is the subject of Atwood's poem "Half-Hanged Mary", as well as the subject of Atwood's dedication in her novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985). At the beginning “The Handmaid’s Tale” was named after its main character, "Offred”. Atwood married Jim Polk, an American writer, in 1968, but divorced in 1973. She formed a relationship with fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon afterward and moved to a farm near Alliston, Ontario, where their daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson, was born in 1976. The family returned to Toronto in 1980. Atwood and Gibson were together until September 18, 2019, when Gibson died after suffering from dementia. She wrote about Gibson in the poem Dearly and in an accompanying essay on grief and poetry published in The Guardian in 2020. Atwood said about Gibson "He wasn't an egotist, so he wasn't threatened by anything I was doing. He said to our daughter towards the end of his life, 'Your mum would still have been a writer if she hadn't met me, but she wouldn't have had as much fun'". Although she is an accomplished writer, Atwood says that she is "a terrible speller" who writes both on a computer and by hand. Career 1960s Atwood's first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published as a pamphlet by Hawkshead Press in 1961, and won the E. J. Pratt Medal. While continuing to write, Atwood was a lecturer in English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, from 1964 to 1965, Instructor in English at the Sir George Williams University in Montreal from 1967 to 1968, and taught at the University of Alberta from 1969 to 1970. In 1966, The Circle Game was published, winning the Governor General's Award. This collection was followed by three other small press collections of poetry: Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); Talismans for Children, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1965); and Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein, Cranbrook Academy of Art (1966); as well as The Animals in That Country (1968). Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. As a social satire of North American consumerism, many critics have often cited the novel as an early example of the feminist concerns found in many of Atwood's works. 1970s Atwood taught at York University in Toronto from 1971 to 1972 and was a writer in residence at the University of Toronto during the 1972/1973 academic year.: xxix–xxx Atwood published six collections of poetry over the course of the decade: The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures for Underground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are Happy (1974), Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1976), and Two-Headed Poems (1978). Atwood also published three novels during this time: Surfacing (1972); Lady Oracle (1976); and Life Before Man (1979), which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award. Surfacing, Lady Oracle, and Life Before Man, like The Edible Woman, explore identity and social constructions of gender as they relate to topics such as nationhood and sexual politics. In particular, Surfacing, along with her first non-fiction monograph, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), helped establish Atwood as an important and emerging voice in Canadian literature. In 1977 Atwood published her first short story collection, Dancing Girls, which was the winner of the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction and the award of The Periodical Distributors of Canada for Short Fiction. By 1976, there was such interest in Atwood, her works, and her life that Maclean's declared her to be "Canada's most gossiped-about writer." 1980s Atwood's literary reputation continued to rise in the 1980s with .... Discover the Margaret Atwood popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Margaret Atwood books.
Best Seller Margaret Atwood Books of 2024
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MaddAddam
Margaret AtwoodNATIONAL BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamantsthis final volume of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy "has brought the pre...
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Last One at the Party
Bethany CliftFleabag meets I Am Legend in this extraordinary novel of one woman's survival in the face of the end of the world . . . December 2023. The human race has fought a deadly virus and ...
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The City Where We Once Lived
Eric Barnes“Barnes has constructed an intricate apocalyptic world that frighteningly mirrors presentday reality.”Shelf Awareness, starred reviewIn a near future where climate change has sever...
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The Book of Hidden Things
Francesco DimitriFrom "one of the most significant figures of the last generation of fantasy", comes Francesco Dimitri's debut novel in English, an enthralling and seductive fantasy following four ...
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Alias Grace
Margaret AtwoodThe bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments reveals the life of one of the most notorious women of the nineteenth century in this "shadowy, fascinating novel" ...
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Revival
Stephen KingStephen King presents “a fresh adrenaline rush of terror” (People) in this electrifying #1 New York Times bestseller!The new minister came to Harlow, Maine, when Jamie Morton was a...
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Stone Mattress
Margaret AtwoodFrom the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsa thrilling, funny, and thoughtprovoking collection of stories that affirms Atwood as our greatest cr...
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Margaret Atwood
John Moss & Tobi KozakewichMargaret Atwood enjoys a unique prominence in Canadian letters. With over thirty books to her credit, in genres ranging from children's writing to dystopic novels, she is as creati...
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Girls with Sharp Sticks
Suzanne Young“Enough plot twists to give a reader whiplash.” CosmopolitanFrom New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Young comes the start of a thrilling, subversive new series about a girls...
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The Lost Girls of Willowbrook
Ellen Marie WisemanGirl, Interrupted meets American Horror Story in 1970s Staten Island, in the evocative new book from the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector. Fact, fiction, a...
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The Blind Assassin
Margaret AtwoodThe bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrati...
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Big Friendship
Aminatou Sow & Ann FriedmanA close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding frien...
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Margaret Atwood
Shannon Hengen & Ashley ThomsonAuthors Shannon Hengen and Ashley Thomson have assembled a reference guide that covers all of the works written by the acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood since 1988, includi...
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Margaret Atwood
Jonathan Noakes & Margaret ReynoldsIn Vintage Living Texts teachers and students will find the essential guide to the works of Margaret Atwood. This guide will deal with her themes, genre and narrative technique, an...
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The Big New Yorker Book of Cats
The New Yorker Magazine, Haruki Murakami, Calvin Trillin & M.F.K. FisherLook what The New Yorker dragged in! It’s the purrfect gathering of talent celebrating our feline companions.This bountiful collection, beautifully illustrated in fu...
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Billy Summers
Stephen KingMaster storyteller Stephen King, whose “restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained” (The New York Times Book Review), presents an unforgettable and relentless #1 New ...
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Shrill
Lindy WestShrill is an uproarious memoir, a feminist rallying cry in a world that thinks gender politics are tedious and that women, especially feminists, can't be funny. Coming of age in a ...
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Moral Disorder and Other Stories
Margaret AtwoodFrom the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments This brilliant collection of connected short stories strings together several decades of moments in the life ...
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Above the Ether
Eric BarnesA mesmerizing novel of unfolding dystopia amid the effects of climate change in a world very like our own, for readers of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Margaret A...
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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Ken LiuFeatured in the Netflix series Love, Death & RobotsBestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple awardwinning stories for a groundbreaking collectionincluding a brandnew piec...
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If It Bleeds
Stephen King#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Includes “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone”now a Netflix original film starring Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell! From the legendary storyteller and master of...
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Margaret Atwood
J. Brooks BousonA collection of original essays by wellknown Atwood scholars offering contemporary critical readings and assessments of three well known Atwood texts.
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The Heart Goes Last
Margaret AtwoodFrom the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsin the gated community of Consilience, residents who sign a contract will get a job and a lovely house for six ...
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The Institute
Stephen KingFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King whose “storytelling transcends genre” (Newsday) comes “another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable” (The ...
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Camp Zero
Michelle Min SterlingINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club PickIn a nearfuture northern settlement, the fates of a young woman, a professor, and a mysterious collective...
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Margaret Atwood
Jacques LECLAIRE & Jean-Michel LacroixCe recueil rassemble des textes sur The Handmaid’s Tale, le roman de Margaret Atwood inscrit aux programmes 1999 du CAPES et de l’Agrégation d’anglais, sous la plume des meilleurs ...
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Sin Eater
Megan Campisi“For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale...a debut novel with a dark setting and an unforgettable heroine...is a riveting depiction of hardwon female empowerment” (The Washington Post).The...
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Rouge
Mona AwadA National Bestseller A USA TODAY Bestseller A New York Times Editors’ Choice A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Good Housekeep...
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The Second Rebel
Linden A. LewisLinden A. Lewis returns with this next installment of The First Sister Trilogy, perfect for fans of Red Rising, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Expanse.Astrid has reclaimed her name a...
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The Climate Book
Greta ThunbergA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWe still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.You might think it's an i...
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The Year of the Flood
Margaret AtwoodNATIONAL BESTSELLER From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsthe second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary ...
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The Testaments
Margaret AtwoodNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE A modern masterpiece that "reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)and can be read on its own...
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The Other Valley
Scott Alexander HowardA Goodreads Most Anticipated Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Book of 2024For fans of Never Let Me Go and The Giver, an elegant and exhilarating literary speculative novel abou...
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Oryx and Crake
Margaret AtwoodNATIONAL BESTSELLER The first volume in the internationally acclaimed MaddAddam trilogy is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the futurefrom the bests...
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The Eyes of the Dragon
Stephen King“It is just not possible to stop turning the pages” (The Washington Post) of this bestselling classic talean epic fantasy as only #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King ...
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The Inheritors
William GoldingHunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning novel by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.This was a different voice; not the voice of the peopl...
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The Robber Bride
Margaret AtwoodFrom the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsone of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spide...
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Margaret Atwood
Frank DaveyMargaret Atwood’s writing, according to Davey, reveals not only an extraordinary facility with language, but also a deep mistrust of it as something shaped by an instrumental and l...
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The School for Good Mothers
Jessamine ChanLonglisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize Selected ...
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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley & Maurice HindleOne of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York TimesMary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she ...
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Hag-Seed
Margaret AtwoodNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The beloved author of The Handmaid’s Tale reimagines Shakespeare’s final, great play, The Tempest, in a gripping and emotionally...
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The Sagas of the Icelanders
Jane SmileyIn Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer,...
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The Power
Naomi AldermanIn this stunning bestseller praised as "our era's Handmaid's Tale," a fierce new power has emergedand only women have it (Washington Post). In The Power, the world is a recogn...
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Little Nothing
Marisa SilverA Huffington Post Book Club Suggestion An O: The Oprah Magazine Fall Pick A LitHub Book You Should Read This September One of The Millions' "Most Anticipated" for 2016 ...