Feisty Female Friday: Margaret Atwood

The FFF this week is Margaret Atwood.

Margaret is a Canadian writer best known for her fiction and for her feminist perspective in her writings.

Her novels all center on women seeking a new relationship to the world and the individuals around them. Among her works are The Handmaiden’s Tale, its sequel, The Testaments, Blind Assassin, The Edible Woman, Surfacing, and The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, The Heart Goes Last, and Hag-Seed. Through her work, she has also helped grow the thriving literary community in Canada today.

As a writer of poetry, 16 collections in all, Margaret discusses human behavior, celebrates the natural world, and condemns materialism. She has also written the libretto for an opera, radio and TV scripts, many short stories, children’s books, and edited numerous anthologies of other writers.

With many of her books banned in the US and her native Canada, she has won 50 awards including Booker and Pen Prizes, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Many of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Margaret today lives in Canada with her male partner, Graeme Gibson, is a mom, and has had her books translated into 50 languages.

Her memoir, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, details her life story and writing style with a true “elbows up” and don’t mess with me mentality. Margaret is truly an important writer for all women today and works with Climate Words, many literary, women’s rights, animal rights and groups, Artists Against Racism, and PEN.