Margaret Atwood

November 18, 1939

Margaret Atwood 

Birth of Margaret Atwood

Novelist Margaret Atwood, who is one of Canada's major contemporary authors, was born at Ottawa.

January 01, 1961

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood published Double Persephone

Margaret Atwood self-published her first book, the collection of poetry, Double Persephone.

January 01, 1961

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Awarded Governor General's Award

Margaret Atwood's reputation as a poet was established when her second book, The Circle Game, was awarded the Governor General's Award.

January 01, 1969

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Edible Woman

Margaret Atwood published The Edible Woman, a novel in which themes of women's alienation echo those in her poetry.

January 01, 1970

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Procedures for Underground and The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Margaret Atwood published two books of poetry: Procedures for Underground and The Journals of Susanna Moodie.

January 01, 1971

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Power Politics

Margaret Atwood published Power Politics, where words were employed as a refuge for women against male force.

January 01, 1972

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Publishes Survival

Margaret Atwood published her interpretation of Canadian literature, Survival.

January 01, 1972

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Surfacing

Margaret Atwood's Surfacing was published, a novel in which the conflict between technology and nature is cast in political terms.

January 01, 1974

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published You Are Happy

Margaret Atwood published You Are Happy, which includes a reworking of The Odyssey from Circe's perspective.

January 01, 1976

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Publishes Lady Oracle

Margaret Atwood's third novel, Lady Oracle, a parody of fairy tales and Gothic romances, won the 1977 City of Toronto Book Award and a Canadian Booksellers Association Award.

January 01, 1977

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Dancing Girls

Margaret Atwood's short-story collection Dancing Girls won the Periodical Distributors of Canada Short Fiction Award.

January 01, 1978

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Two-Headed Poems and Up in the Tree

Margaret Atwood published Two-Headed Poems, which explored the duplicity of language, and Up in the Tree, a children's book.

January 01, 1979

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Life Before Man

Margaret Atwood published the novel Life Before Man.

January 01, 1980

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Co-Published Anna's Pet

Margaret Atwood co-published another children's book, Anna's Pet, with Joyce Barkhouse. In 1986 it was adapted for stage by Nova Scotia's Mermaid Theatre.

January 01, 1981

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published True Stories and Bodily Harm

Margaret Atwood published True Stories, a book of poetry, and Bodily Harm, a novel.

May 22, 1981

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Made a Companion of the Order of Canada

Margaret Atwood is made a Companion of the Order of Canada "for her contributions to literature as poet, novelist, essayist, and teacher."

January 01, 1982

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Second Words

Margaret Atwood's collected criticism, Second Words, was published. It contains some of the earliest feminist criticism written in Canada.

January 01, 1983

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Bluebeard's Egg

Margaret Atwood's short-story collection Bluebeard's Egg won the Periodical Distributors of Canada and the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters Book of the Year Award.

January 01, 1983

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Murder in the Dark

Margaret Atwood published Murder in the Dark, a collection of experimental prose poems and short fictions.

January 01, 1984

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood President of PEN International's Anglo-Canadian Branch

Margaret Atwood became president of PEN International's Anglo-Canadian branch, on whose behalf she edited The CanLit Foodbook (1987).

January 01, 1984

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood published Interlunar

Margaret Atwood published Interlunar, a book of poetry.

January 01, 1985

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale. The novel won the Governor General's Award, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and the Commonwealth Literary Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize (UK) and the Ritz-Paris-Hemingway Prize (Paris).

January 01, 1988

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye, a novel about a visual artist probing questions of subjectivity, creation and temporality, was published. The novel broke literary ground for its exploration of the realm of childhood, with its shifts of power, its secrecies and betrayals. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

January 01, 1991

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Wilderness Tips

Margaret Atwood published Wilderness Tips, winner of the 1992 Trillium Award and the Book of the Year Award of the Periodical Marketers of Canada. The book contains stories with Gothic overtones mixed with narratives about confrontations with the wilderness.

January 01, 1992

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Good Bones

Margaret Atwood published Good Bones. The work features brief texts about female body parts and social constraints written with devastating wit.

January 01, 1993

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Robber Bride

Margaret Atwood published one of her most intricate novels, The Robber Bride. The novel won the 1993 Canadian Authors Association Novel of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Prize for Canadian and Caribbean Region, and the 1994 Trillium Award.

January 01, 1995

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood published Morning in the Burned House

Margaret Atwood published Morning in the Burned House. Her first collection of new poems in a decade, the work included a sequence of elegiac poems, demonstrating a new emotional range in her work.

January 01, 1996

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

Margaret Atwood published Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. The critique was originally delivered as a series of Clarendon Lectures in English Literature at Oxford University in 1991.

January 01, 1996

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood published the highly acclaimed novel Alias Grace. The book was nominated for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, the Orange Prize (UK) and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Ireland). The book won the Giller Prize. It also quickly became an international best-seller.

January 01, 2000

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin was published to great popular and critical acclaim. This novel won the Booker Prize and was shortlisted for both the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. Set in the first half of the 20th century, The Blind Assassin is a multi-layered narrative collage.

January 01, 2003

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood returned to the science-fiction genre with her novel Oryx and Crake. Like The Handmaid's Tale, the book portrays a dystopian future, with humanity brought to the verge of extinction by contemporary social trends and technologies.

January 01, 2005

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Penelopiad

The Penelopiad was published. In it, Atwood invites readers to reconsider the story of Homer's Odyssey as she adopts the perspective and voice of Penelope, backed by a chorus of maidens.

January 01, 2009

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood was published. The novel is set in the same time and place as Oryx and Crake. The plots of the two novels converge.

January 01, 2013

Margaret Atwood 

Atwood Published MaddAddam

Completing a trilogy that includes Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood published MaddAddam.