TORONTO – May 7, 2025 – The Griffin Poetry Prize is pleased to announce Margaret Atwood as the 2025 Lifetime Recognition Award recipient. Instituted in 2006, the Griffin trustees bestow the Lifetime Recognition Award to international artists working in poetry.
Margaret Atwood will be in conversation with Carolyn Forché at the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize Readings.
The Readings will be held at Koerner Hall on Wednesday, June 4 and the evening will include readings by the 2025 shortlisted poets, Aaron Coleman, Durs Grünbein, Brian Henry, Karen Leeder, Carl Phillips, and Diane Seuss, and the Canadian First Book Prize winner — to be announced on May 21. The event will also feature a recitation by one of the 2025 Finalists of Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poésie, a Canada-wide school recitation competition.
The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings and will be awarded $130,000. The other finalists will each be awarded $10,000 for their participation.
Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West, or online.
General Admission, inc. 2025 Anthology – $30.00
Senior/Student, inc. 2025 Anthology – $25.00
To purchase this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, contact your favourite bookstore to pre-order. If you’re interested in anthologies from previous years, visit the House of Anansi Press.
2025 Lifetime Recognition Award: Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed in 2022 with Burning Questions, a selection of essays from 2004–2021. Her most recent collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood, was published in March 2023. In October 2024, Paper Boat, a collection of new and selected poems from 1961–2023, was published.
Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019, she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright, and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
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General Inquiries: Ruth Smith, Executive Director, Tel: (905) 618-0420,info@griffinpoetryprize.com