Teacher Guide

The Handmaid's Tale Lesson Plan

About the Author

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. Her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, was a zoologist who engaged in entomological research during most of Atwood's childhood. Her mother, Margaret Dorothy Killiam, was a former dietician and nutritionist. Atwood was the second of three children. When she was sixteen, Atwood began to study at the University of Toronto. She received her B.A. there in 1961 and her M.A. from Radcliffe in 1962, and she continued to study at Harvard from 1962-63, and from 1965-67. In 1968, Atwood married Jim Polk; they divorced in 1973. She married fellow novelist Graeme Gibson soon after. They had a daughter in 1976, and she helped raise Gibson's two sons from...

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