Margaret Atwood awarded $25K Griffin Poetry Prize lifetime achievement award
Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood has been named the recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize's 2025 Lifetime Recognition Award.
The Ottawa-born Atwood has published over 50 books — poetry, fiction, essays — and is a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature.
She began her writing career with poetry, publishing The Circle Game and winning the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in the late 1960s.
She's since published more than a dozen poetry collections, including The Journals of Susanna Moodie in 1970, Power Politics in 1971 and, most recently, Paper Boat in 2024.
Atwood has won several awards for her work including the Governor General's Literary Award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Writer in the World Prize, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the German Peace Prize.
Her other notable books include the novels The Edible Woman, Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye, the essay collection Burning Questions and the nonfiction work Survival.
Her debut memoir, Book of Lives, is set to be published on November 4, 2025.
The Griffin Trust's Lifetime Recognition Award is presented to a poet from anywhere in the world in celebration of their body of work.
Past recipients include South Korea's Ko Un, Northern Ireland's Seamus Heaney and American Fanny Howe.
Atwood will be honoured with the award on June 4 at a gala event in Toronto, where she will also present a reading and be interviewed onstage by American poet, teacher and activist Carolyn Forché.
The evening will also feature the announcement of the Griffin Poetry Prize winner and the recipient of the Canadian First Book Prize.
Founded in 2000 by Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Scott Griffin, the Griffin Poetry Prize is the world's largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in, or translated into English. The winner will receive $130,000.
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