Author Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul, Turkey on June 7, 1952. After graduating from Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at the Istanbul Technical University. After three years, he decided to become a writer and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976. In 1982, he published his first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons, which received both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. His novel, My Name Is Red, won the French Prix Du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the 2002 Italian Grinzane Cavour, and the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin literary award. He has received numerous Turkish and international literary awards for his works including… the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has spent almost his entire life in Istanbul. From 1985 to 1988, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he also had a fellowship at the University of Iowa.
Born November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Canada, Margaret Atwood spent her early years in the northern Quebec wilderness. Settling in Toronto in 1946, she continued to spend summers in the northern woods. This experience provided much of the thematic material for her verse. She began her writing career as a poet, short story writer, cartoonist, and reviewer for her high school paper. She received a B.A. from Victoria College, University of Toronto in 1961 and an M.A. from Radcliff College in 1962. Atwood's first book of verse, Double Persephone, was published in 1961 and was awarded the E. J. Pratt Medal. She has published numerous books of poetry, novels, story collections, critical work,… juvenile work, and radio and teleplays. Her works include The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Power Politics (1971), Cat's Eye (1986), The Robber Bride (1993), Morning in the Buried House (1995), and Alias Grace (1996). Many of her works focus on women's issues. Atwood is also the author of the MaddAdam trilogy which includes Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAdam. She has won numerous awards for her poetry and fiction including the Prince of Asturias award for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Governor General's Award in 1966 for The Circle Game and in 1986 for The Handmaid's Tale, which also won the very first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987.