Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue (born October 1969) is an Irish Canadian novelist, screenwriter, playwright and literary historian. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2025, Donoghue won the Alice B Readers Award given annually to living writers of published works whose careers are distinguished by consistently well-written works about lesbians.

Background Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1969. The youngest of eight children, she is the daughter of Frances (née Rutledge) and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue. She has a first-class honours Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin (in English and French) and a PhD in English from Girton College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge she lived in a women's co-operative, an experience which inspired her short story "The Welcome". Her thesis was on friendship between men and women in 18th-century fiction.

At Cambridge, she met her future wife, Christine Roulston, a Canadian who is now professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Western Ontario. They moved permanently to Canada in 1998 and Donoghue became a Canadian citizen in 2004.

Influences and approach to writing

Donoghue has spoken of the importance of the writing of Emily Dickinson, as well as Jeanette Winterson's novel The Passion and Alan Garner's Red Shift in the development of her work. She says that she aims to be "industrious and unpretentious" about the process of writing, and that her working life has changed since having children.

Works

Stir Fry and Hood

Donoghue's first novel was 1994's Stir Fry, a contemporary coming of age novel about a young Irish woman discovering her sexuality. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 1994. It was a finalist for the 2001 Irish Literature Prize for Fiction and was awarded the 2002 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction (despite a lack of lesbian content).

Landing

Her 2007 novel, Landing, portrays a long-distance relationship between a Canadian curator and an Irish flight attendant.

The Sealed Letter The Sealed Letter (2008), another work of historical fiction, is based on the Codrington Affair, a scandalous divorce case that gripped Britain in 1864. The protagonist is Emily Faithfull. The Sealed Letter was longlisted for the Giller Prize and was joint winner with Chandra Mayor's All the Pretty Girls of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.

Room

On 27 July 2010, Donoghue's novel Room was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and on 7 September 2010 it made the shortlist. Room was also shortlisted for the 2010 Governor General's Awards in Canada, and was the winner of the Irish Book Award 2010. It was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011, but lost out to Téa Obreht. Donoghue later wrote the screenplay for a film version of the book, Room (2015), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award, and in 2017 adapted it into a play performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Frog Music Donoghue's novel Frog Music, a historical fiction book based on the true story of a murdered 19th-century cross-dressing frog catcher, was published in 2014.

The Wonder

Donoghue's 2016 novel The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. It describes a case of Anorexia mirabilis in which an English nurse is brought in to observe a fasting girl in a devout Irish family; the after effects of the Crimean War, in which the protagonist served, and the Great Famine, in which the family suffered, cast their shadows.

A film of the novel was released in autumn 2022. Directed by Sebastián Lelio, the screenplay is by Donoghue and Alice Birch, with Florence Pugh in the leading role. David Ehrlich of IndieWire called it a "sumptuous but slightly undercooked tale", praising Lelio's direction, the performances, the cinematography, and the score. Peter Bruge praised the cast performances in his review for Variety but criticized the screenplay, summarizing it as an "evenhanded but ultimately preposterous adaptation". The Hollywood Reporter'''s Stephen Farber found it an "illuminating study of dark prejudices" and commended Pugh's performance, as well as Lelio's direction which he said represents perhaps his "finest achievement to date".

AkinAkin (2019) is a contemporary novel, though with much discussion of events during the Second World War in France. Alex Preston in The Guardian called it "dispiriting". The novel received strongly positive reviews from critics and was longlisted for the Giller Prize in 2020.

Haven This novel, published in 2022, is set among monks in the seventh century on Skellig Michael. Hephzibah Anderson, in The Guardian, wrote that "While Haven certainly isn’t her most accessible novel, a flinty kind of hope brightens its satisfying ending. What the reader is likely to take away, however, is the image of a bleak place made still bleaker by human intervention".

Learned by Heart This novel published in 2023 explores the relationship between Anne Lister and Eliza Raine during their time at Miss Hargrave's Manor school. The novel delves into their deep connection and Eliza's reflections from an asylum. While praised for its portrayal of first love, some critics found the detailed depiction of school life overshadowed the central narrative. Learned by Heart was shortlisted for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

The Paris ExpressThe Paris Express (2025) is inspired by the Montparnasse derailment of 1895 Paris.

The book was shortlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize.