and self determined. She grew up wearing pants, a peer with her brother in the wilds of
Canada and far far away from the conventions of little girl society. Sledding across frozen lakes
in the winter, canoeing across them in the summer. At age 10, her father build a vacation cabin
on an unoccupied island in the lake, the family still returns in the summer. During stormy
weather Atwood made comic books and read -- literature, Dell pocketbook mysteries,
Grimm's Fairy Tales, Canadian animal stories and comic books. Her favorite book was
Grimm's' Fairy Tales, this arrived by mail order in 1945; Atwood recalls "I don't remember
finding any of them frightening. By and large, bad things happened only to bad people, which
was reassuring; though children have a bloodthirsty sense of justice, they don't learn mercy
until later."
Atwood's father was an entomologist and until Atwood left elementary school behind, the
family lived in virtually complete isolation at insect-research stations. Her fathers ongoing
research on forest entomology kept the family in the backwoods of northern Quebec, Sault
Ste. Marie and Toronto from November to April. She did not attend school full time until the
8th grade. Her mother was a dietitian. Growing up Atwood was "told there were five things
a girl could be: nurse, teacher, airline stewardess, typist and home economist. I decided
on home economist because it paid the most." Atwood was deeply influenced by Edgar Allan
Poe while in high school; focusing on poetry she decided at age 16 to become a writer.
Her mother told her "If you are going to be a writer, you had better learn to spell." Atwood's
response: "Others will do that for me. And they do."
She followed her brother to the University of Toronto and afterwards accepted a fellowship at
Harvard in the 1960s. At this point, Atwood felt that making a living as a writer was an
"implausible aspiration." In 1968 she married a Harvard classmate, they divorced in 1973.
Afterwards, she became committed to novelist Graeme Gibson, they met in Toronto publishing
circles, their daughter was born in 1976. Today they live in the Annex neighborhood of
Toronto, near the university, they have lived here for 30 plus years. Atwoods's basement
office serves as headquarters for her company O.W. Toad, Ltd ( anagram of Atwood). Atwood
doesn't drive. You may see her in the neighborhood, dragging a shopping cart full of
books, to donate to her local library. Their daughter was age 9 when The Handmaid's Tale
was published; and when she graduated the book was required reading for graduation.
Margaret Atwood has written some sixty books that includes poetry, short story collections,
works of criticism, children's books and recently a comic book series featuring a part-feline,
part-avian, part-human superhero Angel Catbird. "I always wrote more than one type of thing.
Nobody told me not to."
by Margaret Atwood