100 Fun Facts About Margaret Atwood

In which Canadian city was Margaret Atwood born on November 18, 1939?

Because her father was a forest entomologist, she spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec and did not attend school full-time until she was 12.

What was Margaret Atwood's father's profession?

His insect research kept the family moving between Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto, and she began writing plays and poems at six.

Which famous literary critic taught Margaret Atwood at Toronto's Victoria College?

His idea of Canada's 'garrison mentality' later shaped her own book of criticism, Survival; she graduated in 1961 with honours in English.

Where did Margaret Atwood earn her master's degree in 1962, on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship?

She went on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, studied the Puritans there, and never finished her dissertation on 'The English Metaphysical Romance'.

What was the title of Margaret Atwood's first book of poetry, published as a pamphlet in 1961?

It won the E. J. Pratt Medal; The Circle Game followed in 1966 and took the Governor General's Award.

What was Margaret Atwood's first novel, published in 1969?

A satire of North American consumerism, she called it 'social realism' rather than feminism; its heroine Marian stops eating meat after hearing about a rabbit hunt.

Margaret Atwood's 1972 book Survival is a thematic guide to what?

It argues that Canadian writing is defined by 'victim positions' and remains a standard introduction in Canadian studies courses worldwide.

In 1976, which magazine declared Margaret Atwood 'Canada's most gossiped-about writer'?

That decade she published six poetry collections and the novels Surfacing, Lady Oracle and Life Before Man.

In what year was The Handmaid's Tale first published?

It won that year's Governor General's Award and the first ever Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was a Booker finalist in 1986.

What is the name of the totalitarian state that replaces the United States in The Handmaid's Tale?

It is founded by the Sons of Jacob after they assassinate the President and most of Congress.

How is 'Offred', the narrator's designation, constructed?

Handmaids' names change whenever they are moved to a new household; the role is modelled on Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah in Genesis.

In Gilead, what colour do the Handmaids wear?

Wives wear blue, Aunts brown, Marthas green, and Econowives stripes of all three.

What is the name of the Commander's wife in The Handmaid's Tale?

She is a former Christian media personality who preached women's domesticity long before Gilead existed.

Which board game does the Commander secretly play with Offred in his library?

Women in Gilead are forbidden to read, which makes the word game a transgression; he also gives her lingerie and takes her to a state-run brothel.

What is the name of the underground resistance network in The Handmaid's Tale?

Offred learns her shopping partner Ofglen belongs to it; the Eyes are Gilead's secret police.

The novel's epilogue is a transcript of a historians' conference set in which year?

The keynote speaker reveals Offred's story was found on audio cassettes and admits the account is hard to authenticate.

In which city did Margaret Atwood begin writing The Handmaid's Tale in spring 1984?

She finished it in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she held an MFA chair; the story is set in what used to be Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

To which suspected ancestor, who survived a witchcraft hanging, did Atwood partly dedicate The Handmaid's Tale?

Her grandmother would claim the 17th-century Webster as an ancestor on Mondays and deny it on Wednesdays; the poem 'Half-Hanged Mary' is about her too.

How does Margaret Atwood prefer to classify The Handmaid's Tale and her MaddAddam books?

'Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen,' she told the Guardian, and dismissed sci-fi as 'talking squids in outer space'.

Which German director made the 1990 film of The Handmaid's Tale, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter?

It got mixed reviews; a Poul Ruders opera followed in 2000 at the Royal Danish Opera.

On which streaming service did Bruce Miller's The Handmaid's Tale series begin airing in 2017?

Its first season won eight Emmys including Outstanding Drama Series, and Atwood was later nominated as a producer.

Which Margaret Atwood novel is about the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery?

It won the 1996 Giller Prize; Atwood had already written a 1974 CBC TV film, The Servant Girl, about the convicted servant Grace Marks.

Who directed the 2017 miniseries of Margaret Atwood's Grace Marks novel, adapted by Sarah Polley?

It premiered on CBC before landing on Netflix, and Atwood cameos in episode four as a disapproving churchgoer.

For which novel did Margaret Atwood win her first Booker Prize, in 2000?

Her tenth novel also took the Hammett Prize; she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame the following year.

Which 2003 novel opened Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy?

The trilogy imagines genetically engineered creatures like pigoons, rakunks and wolvogs; she insists it contains no technology that is not already possible in theory.

Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad retells which epic from Penelope's point of view?

It was written for the Canongate Myth Series and staged as a play in 2007.

Margaret Atwood's 2016 novel Hag-Seed is a modern retelling of which Shakespeare play?

It was part of Penguin Random House's Hogarth Shakespeare series.

How many years after Offred's final scene is The Testaments set?

The 2019 sequel has three female narrators and was announced on November 28, 2018.

With which author did Margaret Atwood share the 2019 Booker Prize for The Testaments?

Evaristo won for Girl, Woman, Other; The Testaments also won the Goodreads Choice Award for fiction by more than 50,000 votes.

What remote robotic signing device did Margaret Atwood invent so she could skip book tours?

She conceived it in Denver in 2004 on the Oryx and Crake paperback tour and founded Unotchit Inc., later renamed Syngrafii, to build it.

Under the Future Library project, Atwood's Scribbler Moon will not be published until when?

She was the project's first contributor in 2015 and joked that readers may need a paleo-anthropologist to translate parts of it.

What is the superhero comic Margaret Atwood began writing in 2016 with Johnnie Christmas called?

Its hero, scientist Strig Feleedus, ends up with the body parts and powers of both a cat and a bird after an accidental mutation.

Which Canadian writer-performer, who died in 1913, is the subject of the chamber opera with Margaret Atwood's libretto?

Composed by Tobin Stokes and commissioned by City Opera of Vancouver, it premiered at Vancouver's York Theatre in May 2014.

Margaret Atwood's 2008 Massey Lectures, later filmed as a documentary, were published under what title?

Jennifer Baichwal's 2012 film of the lectures weaves in an Armenian blood feud and the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Which CBC children's series from 2017 was adapted from a Margaret Atwood picture book?

The animated show follows Wenda and friends solving adventures with words and sounds, and comes from her 2011 book Wandering Wenda and Widow Wallop's Wunderground Washery.

Which fellow novelist was Margaret Atwood's partner from the 1970s until his death in September 2019?

Their daughter Eleanor Jess was born on a farm near Alliston, Ontario, in 1976; her 2020 poem 'Dearly' is about his loss.

Where in Lake Erie does Margaret Atwood keep a summer home?

She and Gibson were joint honorary presidents of BirdLife International's Rare Bird Club.

How does Margaret Atwood describe her own diet?

'I'm allowing myself gastropods, crustaceans and the occasional fish. Nothing with fur or feathers though,' she said in 2009.

Which two literary organisations did Margaret Atwood help found?

She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College in Toronto.

Which Margaret Atwood novel was on Utah's first list of books to remove from public schools in 2024?

The list followed a 2024 Utah law mandating removal of books deemed objectionable.

Which 1988 Margaret Atwood novel, a 1989 Booker finalist, is often read for autobiographical clues?

Michael Rubbo's 1984 documentary Once in August records his frustration at failing to find autobiography in her work.

How does Margaret Atwood describe her politics, in what she calls the historical sense of the term?

She has also said on Twitter that she is a monarchist, and once attended a Bloc Québécois rally over its arts-funding stance.

Which title did Margaret Atwood publish in 2026, described as 'a memoir of sorts'?

It arrived to mixed reviews, six years after her poetry collection Dearly.

How many novels has Margaret Atwood published since 1961, according to Wikipedia's count?

She has also published 18 books of poetry, 11 of nonfiction, nine short-story collections, eight children's books and two graphic novels.

The Handmaid's Tale won the first-ever edition of which science fiction prize, in 1987?

It also took the 1985 Governor General's Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula, Booker and Prometheus prizes.

The title of The Handmaid's Tale echoes the structure of which medieval work?

Chaucer's collection includes The Merchant's Tale and The Parson's Tale; the title also nods to fairy tales in which the heroine tells her own story.

What is the name of the radical group that overthrows the US government in The Handmaid's Tale?

Inspired by the Old Testament, they assassinate the President and most of Congress and set up a theonomic military dictatorship.

In The Handmaid's Tale, what colour do the Marthas, the household servants, wear?

Aunts wear brown and Handmaids wear red; Marthas are older, infertile women valued for their domestic skills.

Which actress narrates Aunt Lydia on the audiobook of The Testaments, released alongside the novel?

Atwood said Dowd's TV performance as Lydia helped inspire the sequel; Bryce Dallas Howard reads Agnes.

The 15 sections of Alias Grace take their titles from what?

Atwood often uses sewing and domestic arts as images of women's constrained creativity; the Kinnear farm was placed in Richmond Hill, which named a park after the book in 2009.

In The Handmaid's Tale, what colour do the Commanders' Wives wear?

The Wives' colour nods to traditional paintings of the Virgin Mary; their unmarried daughters wear white instead.

What colour do the Aunts, who train the Handmaids, wear?

The Aunts are the only class of women in Gilead permitted to read and write, and only for the paperwork of their job.

Who is the Commander's chauffeur with whom Offred begins a secret relationship?

He lives above the garage and smokes, a forbidden habit; the epilogue hints he was in the resistance and helped Offred escape.

Which college friend of Offred's escapes the Red Center by stealing an Aunt's clothes?

Offred later finds her working in a state-run brothel, which she chose over being sent to the Colonies.

According to the novel's epilogue, Offred's story was originally recorded on what?

Historians transcribed the tapes two centuries later, and the keynote speaker frets that he cannot authenticate them.

In the epilogue, the professor believes the Commander was a man with what surname?

Frederick R. Waterford was supposedly killed in a purge soon after Offred was taken, charged with harbouring an enemy agent.

Which Harvard building is the secret-service headquarters of Gilead in the novel?

Atwood spent long hours researching there as a graduate student, and set the whole novel in the old Harvard Square neighbourhood.

Which Christian group runs an underground escape route to Canada in The Handmaid's Tale?

Atwood said she suspected they really would, given their history; Baptists, Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses are named enemies of the regime.

Who played Offred in the 1990 film of The Handmaid's Tale?

Faye Dunaway played the Commander's wife and Robert Duvall the Commander in the same film.

What real name is Offred given in the 1990 film adaptation?

The novel never reveals her name; the 2017 TV series went with June, a guess many readers had made from a list of whispered names.

Which Danish composer wrote the opera of The Handmaid's Tale that premiered in 2000?

Paul Bentley's libretto turned the first-person novel into a third-person opera that opens with a newsreel-style collage of disasters.

Which dance company premiered a Handmaid's Tale adaptation in October 2013?

Lila York choreographed it, with Amanda Green as Offred; the novel has also been a radio play, a one-woman show and a graphic novel.

In which US city did Atwood finish writing The Handmaid's Tale in 1985?

She held an MFA chair at the University of Alabama that spring; the copyright page thanks its English department for 'time and space'.

Which novelist friend was the first person to read The Handmaid's Tale manuscript?

Atwood remembers mild praise; Martin remembers telling her 'you're about to be rich!'

Which actor plays Commander Fred in the 2017 TV series of The Handmaid's Tale?

He stayed through season four; Bradley Whitford's Commander Lawrence and Max Minghella's Nick are also series regulars.

Which Australian actress plays the Commander's wife in the TV series?

Her character is written as a former conservative activist and author who helped build the society that then sidelined her.

Which actress, who played Emily, left The Handmaid's Tale ahead of its fifth season?

She said she felt she had to step away; her character had been June's first shopping partner and her first link to the resistance.

How many Primetime Emmys did the first season of The Handmaid's Tale win in 2017?

It was the first streaming series ever to win Outstanding Drama Series; in 2021 it set the opposite record, 21 nominations and no wins.

In The Testaments, what was Aunt Lydia's profession before Gilead took over?

She is imprisoned in a stadium during the takeover and handpicked to help write the laws governing Gilead's women.

What is the name of the Aunts' headquarters in The Testaments?

Aunt Lydia's secret manuscript is later published as the Ardua Hall Holograph, one of the three documents the title refers to.

In The Testaments, in which Canadian city does the narrator Daisy grow up?

Her adoptive parents' second-hand clothing shop, the Clothes Hound, is a front for smuggling women out of Gilead.

In the MaddAddam trilogy, a rakunk is a genetic splice of which two animals?

Jimmy's pet rakunk, Killer, is taken by his mother when she flees the compound to join the underground.

In the MaddAddam books, pigoons are pigs engineered to grow what?

Jimmy's father helps develop them at OrganInc; by the end of the trilogy the pigoons are intelligent enough to negotiate.

In the first MaddAddam novel, Glenn takes the name Crake from which online game?

Players take extinct-animal code names; Crake later recruits his bioengineering team from the game's best players.

In the MaddAddam trilogy, Jimmy's post-pandemic alias is short for what?

In the game that named Crake, Jimmy's own code name was Thickney, an Australian bird known for haunting cemeteries.

Which eco-religious sect is at the centre of The Year of the Flood?

The vegetarian sect has its own saints, including Dian Fossey and Rachel Carson, and lives on the Edencliff Rooftop Garden.

Who narrates Atwood's 2000 Booker winner, recalling her sister Laura's life?

She is eventually revealed as the true author of the novel-within-the-novel she published under her dead sister's name.

Atwood's 2000 Booker winner is set partly in which fictional Ontario town?

Real events such as the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens form the backdrop.

Which magazine named The Blind Assassin the best novel of 2000?

It also put the book on its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923; sales jumped tenfold after the Booker.

Atwood pulled The Blind Assassin from which 2000 award after joining its jury?

The novel still collected the Booker and the Hammett Prize, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Dublin Literary Award.

In Lady Oracle (1976), which romance novelist fakes her own death and flees to Italy?

Her secrets include a past as a Polish count's mistress and an affair with a performance artist called The Royal Porcupine.

In The Heart Goes Last, what scheme has residents spend alternate months in prison?

Each couple shares a house with an 'Alternate' couple who live there during the months they are locked up.

In Hag-Seed, under what alias does the ousted director Felix teach in a prison?

He has spent nine years in a ramshackle cottage talking to his dead daughter Miranda before taking the literacy-program job.

Hag-Seed takes its title from a curse aimed at which Shakespeare character?

In Felix's prison production the part goes to an inmate called Leggs, while a hacker named 8Handz plays Ariel.

In The Robber Bride (1993), who fakes her death after betraying Tony, Charis and Roz?

She returns to haunt the three friends in a 2014 story, reincarnated as a dog that bites Charis's boyfriend.

In The Penelopiad, who forms the Greek chorus that interrupts Penelope's story?

Their interludes switch genre each time: a jump-rope rhyme, a ballad, a lecture, even a court trial.

Which painter narrates Atwood's 1988 novel about a bullied childhood?

A retrospective of her art lures her back to the city, where the memories return along with a red plastic purse.

In Cat's Eye, who leads the trio of girls who torment the narrator as a child?

The tables turn in high school, and the last time the two meet she is begging for help to escape a mental hospital.

In Atwood's first novel, what does Marian bake and dare her fiancé Peter to eat?

Once he leaves, disturbed, her appetite returns and she eats it herself; Atwood calls the 1969 book 'protofeminist'.

Which fictional doctor interviews Grace Marks in Atwood's 1996 novel?

He hopes to make his name in mental health and open a private asylum, but ends up fleeing town and joining the Union Army.

Which 1974 CBC television film did Atwood write about Grace Marks?

It relied on Susanna Moodie's account; by 1996 Atwood had decided Moodie fabricated parts of it and changed her view of Marks.

Who played Grace Marks in the 2017 CBC/Netflix miniseries?

The prison scenes were shot at Kingston Penitentiary, where the real Grace Marks served almost thirty years.

Atwood's 1970 poetry cycle adopts the voice of which 19th-century settler-writer?

Its third journal has her speaking from beyond the grave about 20th-century Canada, right up to 1969.

Atwood famously dismissed science fiction as what, to the annoyance of SF fans?

She later agreed with Ursula K. Le Guin that their definitions simply used different words for the same things.

Atwood has described herself as 'a terrible' what?

She writes both by hand and on a computer, and began writing plays and poems at the age of six.

What was the profession of Atwood's mother, Margaret Killam?

She came from Woodville, Nova Scotia; the family spent much of Atwood's childhood in the northern Quebec backwoods.

In her cameo in the TV series' pilot, Atwood plays what kind of Gilead figure?

She slaps Offred at the Red Center; she has since turned up in Murdoch Mysteries as an amateur ornithologist.

With which Indian author did Atwood accept the $1,000,000 Dan David Prize in 2010?

She went to Tel Aviv University despite boycott calls, saying 'we don't do cultural boycotts'.

What was the first name of the company Atwood founded for her remote-signing device?

The idea came to her on a 2004 paperback tour in Denver; the firm renamed itself in 2013 and now sells cloud e-signatures.

What was Atwood's 2018 Globe and Mail op-ed defending her stance on due process called?

It followed backlash over her signing a 2016 petition calling for an independent inquiry into a fired UBC professor.