Margaret Atwood to receive PEN Center USA's Lifetime Achievement Award
Margaret Atwood is being awarded a lifetime achievement award from the PEN Center USA for her "visionary" storytelling and remarkable body of work.
The author of over 40 books, including novels, children's books, critical essays and poetry, Atwood counts a Giller Prize (now known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize), two Governor General's Literary Awards and a Booker Prize (now known as the Man Booker) among her many prestigious honours.
Her iconic 1985 book The Handmaid's Tale recently jumped back onto bestseller lists around the globe. A television adaptation of the novel, starring Elisabeth Moss, premiered in April 2017 and is a critical hit. The series airs on Bravo in Canada.
"Throughout her career, Ms. Atwood has vividly explored elements of the human experience — power, oppression, complacency, language — expertly and with such conviction," said Michelle Franke, executive director of PEN Center USA.
"Her body of work is to the bone, sometimes visionary in its presentation of the past, present and futures foretold. How has she done this? By writing with a kind of knowing, an unflinching trust in historical cycles."
Over the past year, Atwood, 77, has received several international awards, including:
- Germany's 2017 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for her "political intuition"
- Chicago Public Library's Carl Sandburg Literary Award her contributions to literary culture
- National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
- PEN Pinter Prize for political activism
Atwood is a writer of incredible range, demonstrated by the myriad of titles published over the past year: a children's book called A Trio of Intolerable Tales, a superhero graphic novel with Johnnie Christmas titled Angel Catbird and the novel Hag-Seed, which is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Coming up in September, an adaptation of Atwood's Alias Grace will premiere on CBC-TV. The six-hour miniseries was directed by American Psycho director Mary Harron and written and produced by Sarah Polley.
Atwood will accept this latest honour at a literary awards festival in October, hosted by award-winning actor Nick Offerman, best known for his role in Parks and Recreation.