Margaret Atwood will be awarded the Grand Prize for lifetime achievement at this year's Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.

The festival awards the $10,000 prize annually to a distinguished international literary figure.

Margaret Atwood, shown here in January 2006, will be honoured at the Blue Met literary festival in Montreal.
(Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"Margaret Atwood is the pre-eminent writer from Canada," said Linda Leith, founder and artistic director of the festival.

"It's not for a particular book. It's for her accomplishment as a writer."

Born in 1939 in Ottawa, Atwood first became known as a poet, then as the author of a series of novels featuring strong, enigmatic women, including Surfacing and Bodily Harm.

Atwood is the author of award-winning works such as The Handmaid's Tale and more recently The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake, but also a prolific essayist.

Her most recent book is Moral Disorder, a collection of stories.
 
"She is best-known as a novelist but, to her great credit, she has written in just about every literary genre there is," Leith said.

Atwood's work has been translated into more than 30 languages and distributed around the world.

The 2007 Blue Met will gather 250 writers, translators, musicians, journalists and publishers from Quebec and around the world for literary events in English, French, Spanish and other languages from April 25 to 29.

Atwood will receive the award at the festival. She is also scheduled to speak at an event with her husband, Graeme Gibson, which will be podcast.

Past recipients of the Blue Metropolis award include Norman Mailer, Mavis Gallant, Carlos Fuentes and Michel Tremblay.

Last year's Blue Met festival paid tribute to late Canadian writers Irving Layton and Saul Bellow.