Margaret Atwood

She is Honorary President of the Rare Bird Club. Atwood and her partner, novelist Graeme Gibson, were made Joint Honorary Presidents of BirdLife International’s Rare Bird Club. It’s not clear what exactly Atwood does for the Rare Bird Club, but BirdLife International is dedicated to the conservation of endangered bird species around the world (as the name would suggest). You can check out this video to learn more and Atwood makes a brief, endearing appearance.

Both of her parents were scientists. Atwood’s mother, Margaret Dorothy, was a dietician and nutritionist in Nova Scotia, and her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, was an entomologist who focused on forests in particular. Growing up, Atwood spent a lot of time in woods of Canada, where her mother would teach her and her siblings. At eight years old Atwood began attending school full-time, but many of her reading and writing habits started before her formal education.

She lived in West Berlin during the Cold War. In her wonderful interview with Emma Watson, Atwood spoke about her time writing The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984 while living in West Berlin. Answering whether or not her time in West Berlin inspired The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood told Watson: I had been thinking about it before I’d arrived, and at that time — when I was in West Berlin—I also visited Czechoslovakia and East Germany and Poland. They weren’t revelations, because being as old as I am I knew about life behind the Iron Curtain, but it was very interesting to be right inside, to sense the atmosphere….So it was very interesting to be there, but it wasn’t the primary inspiration.

She is a student of military history. The New Yorker’s profile of Atwood notes that she traveled around the world with Gibson and her daughter in 1976. Of particular interest is her stop in Afghanistan, where she stopped “to see the terrain where the British had been defeated.” That’s cool. When I go on vacation it’s usually to a theme park and it’s usually to eat fried things.

Northrop Frye helped get her career started in undergrad. When she was enrolled at the University of Toronto in undergrad, Atwood audited Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye’s course on the Bible and literature. Frye helped Atwood score a fellowship to Harvard, where she eventually worked on a doctoral dissertation titled “The English Metaphysical Romance.” But after two years, Atwood dropped out of Harvard and left her dissertation unfinished. It’s cool, though, because writing The Handmaid’s Tale counts as bigger and better things. Sorry, Harvard!