Writer.

Born in Ottawa ON, Margaret Atwood is regarded as the leading writer in the English language in Canada and she enjoys an international readership. After studies in Toronto and in the USA, Atwood began publishing poetry in the early 1960s, and, in 1969, she published her first important work of fiction, The Edible Woman, a novel. The theme of much of her early writing was women's alienation from and subjugation by mainstream society.

As her career developed, she took up the themes of Canadian nationalism, extending her work into political cartoons and literary criticism. Like many writers around the time of the Canadian centennial in 1967, she voiced criticism of the domination of North America by the USA.

Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) was highly influential, as was Surfacing, a novel that treated, among other themes, the relation of USAmericans to Canadians, and the psychological power of the Canadian wilderness and Native cultures as a source of identity for Canadians.

Always interested in civil rights, Atwood became a voice of conscience for public policy generally. She did so in both non-fiction prose (notably, in her support for writers in other countries who were struggling against censorship), and in fiction; The Handmaid's Tale won international critical acclaim for its exploration of society in the nuclear age dominated by right-wing policies and men.

Although particularly successful with fiction, Atwood has always continued to write poetry, children's books, essays, speeches, and literary criticism, the last her weakest work. Her most widely read works set in Canadian history are Journals of Susanna Moodie (1971), a volume of poetry, and Alias Grace (1996), a novel.

Atwood's temperament is usually satirical. She is regarded as one of the most influential social critics of our times, and much of her work is regarded as prophetic in its criticism of our society's decaying morality.