Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa. She is the author of more than forty
volumes of poetry, novels, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction.
While studying in Boston, she published her first collection of poetry, The Circle
Game (1966), which was awarded the prestigious Governor General’s Award and she gained
international reputation after publishing the poetry collection Double Persephone. Over the
next few years, she continued to alternate between poetry and prose. In her poetry, the most
common theme is the relation between civilization and wilderness and she considers these
oppositions to be some of the defining principles of Canadian literature. She is the author of
over fifteen books of poetry which have been translated in many languages and published in
more than twenty five countries.
Her poetry work includes: The Circle Game (1964); The Animals in That Country (1969);
The Journals of Suzanna Moodie (1970); Procedures for Underground (1970); Power Politics (1971);
You are Happy (1974); Selected poems (1976); Selected poems (1965-1975); Two-Headed Poems (1978);
Interlunar (1984); Selected Poems (1966-1984); Margaret Atwood Poems (1976-1986); Morning in
the Burned House (1995); Eating Fire: Selected Poetry (1965-1995); The Door (2007).