Discover ten authors like Margaret Atwood who consistently deliver page-turners across historical, literary, and science fiction genres.
We have chosen ten authors like Margaret Atwood, who offer sophisticated speculative and literary fiction for your next great read.
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian writer and undoubtedly one of the best-known authors in the world. Atwood writes across multiple genres, including speculative fiction, historical fiction, dystopia, and character-driven literary fiction. She is recognized for her poems, essays, literary criticism, and many novels penned from a feminist perspective.
Her most notable work is The Handmaid’s Tale, which as of late 2018, had sold 8 million copies in English since its publication in 1985. It also inspired the 2017 TV drama of the same name.
Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Giller Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Booker Prize.
Regarding literacy, Atwood said, “Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.”
In addition to writing, Atwood is a human rights activist and environmentalist. She also invented the remote signing device called LongPen.
The following authors have proved themselves as formidable as Atwood herself. Once you have reviewed our selection, take a look at the ten best-known authors of world fame.
Contents
Best Authors Like Margaret Atwood Ranked
1. A. S. Byatt, 1936-2023
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known by her pen name A.S. Byatt, was a remarkable British writer with a literary career spanning 60 years. Known for her novels and short stories, she has proved herself an excellent storyteller, combining intellect with imagination to create lush and evocative prose.
Duffy’s sister, Helen Langdon, was an art historian, and this influenced Byatt, who cultivated a great interest in art and literature, as is reflected in her work. Duffy was also a scholar of language, studying French, German, Latin, English, and Italian.
Her novel Possession, a combination of romance and mystery, won The Booker Prize in 1990. It tells the story of a pair of academics discovering a secret relationship between two Victorian poets and striving to unearth the full story by interpreting their poems, recovering old correspondence, and attending spiritualist séances.
Duffy’s books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
“I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.”
A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
2. Ursula K. Le Guin,1929-2018
Ursula K. Le Guin was a renowned American novelist. Le Guin was born into an intellectual family. Her father, Alfred Kroeber, was an anthropologist, while her mother was the writer Theodora Kroeber. Le Guin’s upbringing influenced her strongly, and she often scrutinized culture and society in her work.
Her interest in fantasy and science-fiction, present from childhood, also influenced her preferred genres as an author.
Le Guin wrote essays, short stories, poems, and novels. Among her most famous works is A Wizard of Earthsea, written in 1968. It is a fantasy novel that is considered a classic work for children.
Her first science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, is quoted as being “groundbreaking for its radical investigation of gender roles and its moral and literary complexity.”
Le Guin has won many awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. No doubt that her works will continue to serve as inspiration for new fantasy and fiction writers.
The common ground between Le Guin and Atwood is in their engagement with speculative fiction and its potential for social commentary.
“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
3. Kazuo Ishiguro, 1954
Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British writer famous for his poignant novels that focus on identity, subversion, and cultural change. He was born in 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan, but his family moved to the United Kingdom when he was five.
Ishiguro wrote his first short stories after traveling around America and Canada and penned his first novel a few years later while still an English Literature and Philosophy student. During his education at the University of Kent, Ishiguro demonstrated a passion for folk music and began volunteering with charitable organizations combating homelessness.
In 1979, he studied a Master of Arts course in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia under the tutorship of British writer Angela Carter. At this time, Ishiguro began to submit short stories, three of which were published by Faber and Faber, which led to a critical relationship with their fiction editor, Robert McCrum.
McCrum gave Ishiguro a contract and advanced on the novel A Pale View of Hills, published in 1982. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize from the Royal Society of Literature. Subsequently, Ishiguro became the youngest member of GRANTA magazine’s first ’20 Best of Young British Novelists’ promotion in 1983, alongside writers such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Graham Swift.
In 1983, Ishiguro became a full-time writer. One of his most famous works, The Remains of the Day, was published in 1989. The story is set in post-WWII-Britian and focuses on a butler who, after 30 years of loyal service to one gentleman, considers his worth and the value of his service. It won the Booker Prize and was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
Ishiguro is a writer of critical acclaim, winning numerous accolades for his work. In addition to novels, he has written several screenplays and even became a lyricist for the jazz singer Stacey Kent. He is a much-celebrated author and the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in literature.
Both Atwood and Ishiguro use speculative fiction to delve into profound questions about humanity.
“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
4. Octavia E. Butler, 1947-2006
Octavia E. Butler was an African-American writer and pioneer in the science fiction genre. Butler grew up in a time when racial discrimination was prevalent. This is reflected in her work as Butler deals with topics such as racial identity, power, and survival in a complex society, all through imagined worlds and futuristic situations.
Like Atwood, Butler is known for creating fictional worlds that serve as a backdrop for thought-provoking explorations of societal problems.
Among her most famous work is Parable of the Sower, published in 1993. It is a dystopian novel set in a near-future America when the country is in a state of social and financial collapse. The book has been called “Alarmingly prescient and relevant.” by Publishers Weekly.
She is the winner of many awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship, making her the first science fiction writer to win this award. In addition, she won the Hugo and Nebula awards.
“There is no end to what a living world will demand of you.”
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
5. Zadie Smith, 1975
Zadie Smith is a British writer acknowledged for novels and essays. As an author of African-British origin, her personal perspective is reflected in her work as she explores the identity and experiences of African-British people.
Smith gained fame at the age of 24 when she debuted with the novel White Teeth, for which she won many awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Betty Trask Award. The book describes the lives of two families in London or, more precisely, two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi man Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones. The main focus of this book is Britain’s relationship with immigrants from the British Commonwealth.
Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood are considered similar because of their shared exploration of contemporary societal matters.
“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”
Zadie Smith, White Teeth
6. Sophie Mackintosh, 1988
Sophie Macintosh is a British author who has made this list because of her popularity and, like Atwood, her interest in the female perspective.
Two of her three novels, The Water Cure and Blue Ticket, focus on the difficult decisions women have to make when curtailed by society. The Water Cure was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and won a Betty Trask Award.
Cursed Bread tells the tale of a town gripped by madness that brings out the very worst in everyone.
In addition to writing novels and short fiction, Macintosh is a columnist for numerous mainstream publications and teaches fiction at several educational facilities.
“Thinking yourself uniquely terrible is its own form of narcissism.”
Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure
If you are interested in reading more about the female perspective, check out our roundup of the best feminist authors.
7. Angela Carter, 1940–1992
Angela Carter was an English novelist noted for her prose, poems, short stories, and novellas. At a younger age, she also worked as a journalist for the weekly newspaper The Croydon Advertiser.
The cultural movements of the ’60s and 70’s influenced Carter’s sensitivity to political and social issues, which often feature in her work. Carter specifically examines the role of women in society, gender stereotypes, and the challenges women face.
Her genre centers mostly on fantasy and feminist literature, but there are also elements of fairy tales. Her most notable work is The Bloody Chamber, a collection of fairy tales and short stories mainly with feminist topics. This is precisely why Carter is similar to Atwood – The common line of reevaluating and reinventing traditional narratives with a feminist lens.
“Love is desire sustained by unfulfilment.”
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber
8. Alice Munro, 1931
Alice Munro is a Canadian author known for her short stories. Her upbringing in Ontario, Canada, strongly influences her work and creates context in her writing. Munro encapsulates the cultural and social aspects of her native region as she tells stories of the mystery, intimacy, and challenges of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
Among her most popular collections is Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968. It is a collection of 15 short stories in which Munro “conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision.”
Her extraordinary contribution was rewarded in 2013 when she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In addition to being of the same nationality as Atwood, both authors focus on portraying the complexity of human lives and relationships. Munro is a true master of storytelling. Reading Alice Munro is an invitation to experience the beauty and poignancy of life and the short story genre.
“The constant happiness is curiosity.”
Alice Munro
9. Naomi Alderman, 1974
Naomi Alderman is an English novelist and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017. She is famous for her works in speculative fiction. Alderman has a propensity for tackling social topics, including gender roles.
As a writer of Jewish descent and raised in an environment with multicultural influences, Alderman has experienced the obstacles and conflicts that arise from culture and religion. Her observations have strongly influenced her work.
One of her most famous works, Disobedience, deals with the conflict between personal freedom and religious tradition within the Orthodox Jewish community. This book also served as the basis for a film with the same name in 2017.
“Silence is not power. It’s not strength. Silence is the means by which the weak remain weak and the strong remain strong. Silence is a method of oppression.”
Naomi Alderman, Disobedience
10. Barbara Kingsolver, 1955
Barbara Kingsolver is an American author born in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland. She is known for her poems, essays, and novels. The main focus in her works is social justice, environmentalism, and the human connection to the natural world.
Kingsolver is actually the first author to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction twice for her works The Lacuna in 2010 and Demon Copperhead in 2023.
The fact that she is an environmentalist strongly influences her work. Her book Prodigal Summer explores the topic of human impact on the environment and ecology.
The similarity with Atwood lies in the fact that the two authors use their storytelling to analyze and critique societal standards and the impact of human actions on the environment.
“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.”
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
For more, read our guide to the best female authors.
