Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer with award-winning credits to her name incorporating poetry, short stories and novels, including The Circle Game(1966), The Handmaid’s Tale(1985), The Blind Assassin(2000),Oryx and Crake(2003) and The Tent(2006).
In this post we have a quick look at 5 things you may not have known about her.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1939.
It’s documented that she began writing at the age of five. By the age of six she was writing morality plays, poems, comic books, and had started a novel.
Atwood had aspirations to be a painter as a child. She is a talented photographer and watercolorists too. It’s said that her paintings are very clearly descriptive of her prose and poetry, with her designing her own book covers on occasion. She has reportedly said she may return to painting when she retires.
Atwood has been known to be a very outspoken advocate for environmental issues in both her writing and her life. Her most recent novels – Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam – have a strong “green” focus.
Atwood and her partner Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honorary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International.
Atwood is the first author to contribute to The Future Library Project, which will take one writer’s contribution each year for the next hundred years to be printed in the year 2114.
