Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939. Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic best known for her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

Atwood’s father was an entomologist, specializing in the insects of the forest. As a result, she spent much of her early childhood in the remote forests of northern Quebec and didn’t attend school full-time until she was twelve. She was a voracious reader as a child, though, and the lack of formal education didn’t seem to hold her back (though she says that she is still a terrible speller). Atwood graduated high school with her peers at 18, and went on to college, ultimately obtaining a Master’s degree from Radcliffe College.

She self-published a small collection of poetry in 1961, but Atwood’s first formal publication was the 1964 poetry collection The Circle Game (e-book), which won the Governor General’s Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards. She published her first novel in 1969; The Edible Woman (print) is a satire about gender stereotypes and consumerism that Atwood would later describe as “protofeminist.”

Feminism and women’s search for their own identities have been recurring themes in Atwood’s fiction. The challenge of defining one’s own identity is often tied, especially in her early work, to the question of Canadian identity. Her 1972 history of Canadian literature, Survival (e-book), focuses on survival as a key metaphor in Canadian literature; that metaphor also occurs in her novel from the same year, Surfacing (e-book | print), which explores Canadian identity at a time when separatism was on the rise among Quebec's French-speaking population.

Atwood continued to explore women’s place in society in her next few novels. Lady Oracle (e-book | print) filtered the subject through a parody of fairy tales and Gothic romances; Bodily Harm (e-book | print | audio) explored power, both personal and political, in the story of a reporter caught up in a revolution in a fictional Caribbean country.

Atwood’s novels to this point in her career had been critically respected and sold moderately well, especially in Canada. The Handmaid’s Tale (e-book | print | audio) broke through to a new level of popularity. The dystopian tale of America turned into “Gilead,” a repressive theocracy in which women are subservient and valued primarily for their ability to bear children, was an international bestseller. It brought Atwood her second Governor General’s Award, and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, England’s award for the best science fiction novel of the year.

Atwood expressed some surprise at the latter award, saying that she didn’t think the novel was science fiction at all. She draws a distinction between science fiction, which is based on things that are (at present) impossible, and speculative fiction, which is based on things that could actually happen based on extrapolation of current trends; for Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is speculative fiction. Her statements on the subject sometimes came across as condescending and insulting to science fiction fans, as when she reduced the genre to “talking squids in outer space.”

In recent years, Atwood has acknowledged that many readers do not distinguish so sharply between science fiction and speculative fiction, and that much of her writing can legitimately be thought of as “social science fiction.” She explored the question further, along with other topics related to science fiction, in her critical 2011 work In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (e-book | e-audio | print).

Atwood’s novels of the 1990s explored darker sides of female behavior. The Robber Bride (e-book | e-audio | print) centered on three women and the former classmate who had destroyed each of their romantic relationships; Alias Grace (e-book | print | audio) was loosely based on an 1843 murder case in which a household servant had killed her employer. "I'm not making a case for evil behavior,” Atwood said, “but unless you have some women characters portrayed as evil characters, you're not playing with a full range."

Atwood returned to science/speculative fiction in 2003 with Oryx and Crake (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), the first volume in a post-apocalyptic trilogy about the consequences of genetic engineering; the series continued with The Year of the Flood (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) and MaddAddam (e-book | e-audio | print | audio).

Some of Atwood’s projects have felt a bit like science fiction themselves. In 2006, she introduced the LongPen, a device of her own invention that allows the remote signing of books and other documents; combined with a viewing screen for remote broadcasts, it allows an author to do appearances and book signings without being physically present. And in 2014, her novel called Scribbler Moon was the first contribution to the Future Library project, which plans to collect one novel each year from a prominent author for the next century, with none of them to be released publicly until 2114.

Her novels have gotten the most attention, but Atwood has worked in other genres. She’s continued to write poetry; the highlights are collected in two Selected Poems volumes, covering 1965-1975 (e-book) and 1976-1986 (e-book). She’s also written several volumes of short stories, most recently 2014’s Stone Mattress (e-book | e-audio | print); and collaborated with artists on two graphic novel series, Angel Catbird (e-book | print) and War Bears (e-book | print). In 2014, Atwood wrote the libretto for Pauline, a chamber opera by composer Tobin Stokes.

That wasn’t Atwood’s first connection to opera; Danish composer Poul Ruders adapted The Handmaid’s Tale in 2000, and while many contemporary operas quickly disappear after their premieres, this one has had several productions.

The Handmaid’s Tale has been Atwood’s most frequently adapted work; there was a theatrical film in 1990 and a ballet in 2013, and the Hulu television series has been renewed for a fourth season. (The first three seasons are available on DVD.) And Atwood’s most recent novel, published just a few weeks ago, is The Testaments (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale that seems to be influenced somewhat by the TV series; one of the new book’s narrators is Aunt Lydia, who has been one of the series’ principal characters.

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November 22, 1744

Abigail Adams was born. Adams was the second First Lady of the United States, the wife of President John Adams. Her husband frequently sought her advice, and she took such an active role in politics that political opponents referred to her as “Mrs. President.” About 1,200 letters between John and Abigail survive, giving us a rich portrait of their relationship, and of her influence on his thinking. Woody Holton’s biography is called Abigail Adams (e-book | e-audio | print | audio).

November 21, 1843

Hetty Green was born. Green was a financier and businesswoman who became the richest woman in America at the beginning of the 20th century. She inherited some money from her father, who was a success in the whaling industry, and through investments and real estate deals, amassed a fortune estimated at somewhere between $100 million and $200 million dollars at her death in 1916; that would be somewhere between $2.3 billion and $4.6 billion in today’s dollars. The biography Hetty (e-book) is written by Charles Slack.

November 20, 1939

Dick Smothers was born. Dick and his brother, Tom, were the Smothers Brothers, a popular comedy/music duo of the 1960s. From 1967 to 1969, they hosted the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a variety show which became increasingly outspoken on politics. The show’s renewal for the 1969-70 television season had already been announced when the show was abruptly cancelled. Several of the Smothers Brothers’ comedy records are available for streaming at Hoopla; David Bianculli tells the story of the Comedy Hour in Dangerously Funny (e-book | e-audio | print).

November 18, 1978

In Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple cult died of cyanide poisoning in a mass murder/suicide on the orders of their leader, Jim Jones. Approximately one-third of the victims were minors. Five other people, including California Congressman Leo Ryan, were murdered by Temple members earlier that day as they attempted to leave from a nearby airstrip. Jeff Guinn tells the story of Jones and the Peoples Temple in The Road to Jonestown (e-book | e-audio | print | audio).