But film is an exciting new area of collaboration that I've moved into in the second half of my 40s. (Except that occasionally they refuse!). My adaptation of my fairy-tale book, Kissing the Witch, premiered at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in June 2000. If you write poems or stories, submit them to magazines. Emma Donoghue in Conversation with Sally Wainwright; Bibliography; Index. At that point, the rumblings turned into a roar. In Britain my top names are Julian Barnes, Michael Frayn, Leon Garfield, Alan Garner, Philippa Gregory, Hilary Mantel, Diana Norman, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Adam Thorpe, Barry Unsworth, Barbara Vine, and Sarah Waters. I wrote poetry constantly from early childhood. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). What was your PhD on? It can make you very preoccupied with what youve lived through yourself. "I could have set The Pull of the Stars anywhere, but I went for my home town of Dublin partly because Ireland was going through such a fascinating political metamorphosis in those years, and because I wanted to reckon with my countrys complicated history of carers, institutions and motherhood.". [13] Hood won the 1997 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature (now known as the Stonewall Book Award for Literature). Where do you fit into the Irish literary tradition? What draws you to work in such different genres? You'll find agents' addresses in publications like the. No, what lured me to England was funding: full support (from the British Academy and the University of Cambridge) for the first three years of a PhD, which in the event turned into an eight-year stay. What draws you to work in such different genres? Fiction is my favourite, and the one I live off. where does the poo go when you flush the toilet?) Sometimes I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Jane Austen, for whose novel. Libe Garca Zarranz, TransCanadian Feminist Fictions: New Cross-Border Ethics (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2017) studies my work (Slammerkin, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Room and Astray) alongside that of Dionne Brand and Hiromi Goto. She left Ireland in her 20s to complete a doctorate at. ", Of all the book's questions, those that centre on the parent-child bond are at its core. What the reader is likely to take away, however, is the image of a bleak place made still bleaker by human intervention". Write a lot, write with passion. Higgins. Wouldnt you rather be known just as a writer? Just a few books that have stunned me in recent years: Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Travellers Wife; Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance; Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin; Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. And I see now that it's not just about who wins, it's about drawing attention to the business of fiction. I find my new home, Canada, a more diverse and just society than any other Ive known, so Im glad to have washed up here. When I think about how embarrassed and sheepish so many gay people felt around 1990, its unrecognisable. The Wonder (adapted from my novel with Sebastin Lelio and Alice Birch) followed in 2022. My series for middle-grade readers (8 to 12), The Lotterys, includes The Lotterys Plus One (2017) and The Lotterys More Or Less (2018), both illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono. Passions Between Women was shortlisted for the 1997 Lambda Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction. Their kids, Donoghue said, inspired both the book and film. Julia M. Wright (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 425-35. Write a lot, write with passion. Stephanie Scott (Penn State), "At Home in the Nation: Hermeneutical Injustice in the Works of Jamie O'Neill and Emma Donoghue," papered delivered MLA 2017 (Philadelphia). Until now, Donoghue's reputation had been founded on her knack for spotting historical rough diamonds and buffing them into glowing narratives. "I deliberately restricted his access to the book," Donoghue says. [31], Akin (2019) is a contemporary novel, though with much discussion of events during the Second World War in France. FAQ - Emma Donoghue Emma Donoghue's script for Room won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Irish Film and Television Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the Evening Standard Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Independent Spirit Award for First Screenplay, as well asthe Eda Award for Best Woman Screenwriter, the Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Indiana Film Journalists Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Online Film & Television Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Nevada Film Critics Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (tied with Drew Goddard for The Martian), the Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Eda Award for Best Woman Screenwriter, the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Canadian Film and Best Screenplay in a Canadian Film, and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay. The Wonder and Room were longlisted for the 2012 International Impac Dublin Literary Award. The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits was shortlisted for the 2003 Stonewall Book Award. A superb analysis of my story cycles as historiographic metafiction. Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to 'Gentleman Jack - Amazon Winner of the 2010 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Emma Donoghue has introduced a fresh, if often jarring, voice in modern fiction produced by women. Directed by Sebastin Lelio, the screenplay is by Donoghue and Alice Birch, with Florence Pugh in the leading role. My one-act comedy Dont Die Wondering (based on my radio play of the same name) received its world premiere at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in 2005. And the research. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Chris Roulston and our son Finn and daughter Una. In Lionel Shriver's Orange-prizewinning We Need to Talk About Kevin, sparked by the Columbine massacre, a mother and her son create hell in the heart of a middle-class idyll; in Room, Ma and Jack conjure humdrum beauty out of a kind of hell. My favourite Irish writer is probably Roddy Doyle. Eibhear Walshe, Emma Donoghue, b. . [32] Alex Preston in The Guardian called it "dispiriting". And going out in public in clean clothes to give readings or interviews too. I wrote my first novel (over and over) from the age of 19. All writing is political, but only writers who belong to a minority get asked this question, funnily enough. "Tough times, and then a little tea break": An Interview with Emma Donoghue First came the bidding war, eventually won in the UK by Picador; then the rumours, rare these days, of an astronomical advance (the figure of 1m has been mentioned; Donoghue allows only that it was "mortifyingly large"). Impossible to tell. I hang out with our kids, read, watch tv and films, read, sit around talking to my beloved and friends, and read a bit more. PDF The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, Page 1 (February 2020) The Wonder Introduction to Virago Modern Classics edition of Polly Devlin, "Picking Up Broken Glass, or, Turning Lesbian History into Fiction" in, "Random Shafts of Malice? David Clare, Fiona McDonagh and Justine Nakase, Ellen McWilliams, 'Transatlantic Encounters in the Writing of Emma Donoghue', in her, Ciaran O'Neill, ' The cage of my moment: a conversation with Emma Donoghue about history and fiction,', Michael Lackey, Ireland, the Irish, and Biofiction, in, Michael Lackey, Emma Donoghue: Voicing the Nobodies in the Biographical Novel, in. Would that it did. Stacia Bensyl, Swings and Roundabouts: An Interview with Emma Donoghue, Irish Studies Review, 8, No. Join IrishCentrals Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book-loving community. Introduction to Virago Modern Classics edition of Molly Keane. Emma Donoghue's restrained novel about two captives illuminates the "Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!'. What do you do when you're not writing? She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. Debbie Brouckmans, 'The Short Story Cycle in Ireland: From Jane Barlow to Donal Ryan', PhD thesis (U of Leuven) 2015. Emma Donoghue: Selected Plays, containing my first five works for theatre, is available from Oberon Books. I get asked this question all the time, and I really appreciate the fact that so many readers who like my work want to defend me from what they see as limiting labels. by Anne Macdona (Dublin: New Island, 2001), 'Proving It,' Siren (Toronto), October 1998, 'The Youngest Child,' Womens News (Belfast), November 1997, 'A Pagan Place,' Gay Community News (Ireland), February 1996, Coming Out a Bit Strong, Index on Censorship, 24, No. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. Much has been made of Donoghue's status as an outsider on the Booker longlist, someone who is finally getting her moment in the sun; Donoghue doesn't view it that way at all. 'Emma Donoghue: My curiosity flares up when I hear about'. Slammerkin was a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club, won the 2002 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction, and was a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Fiction Prize. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. Landing won the 2008 Golden Crown Literary Award (Lesbian Dramatic General Fiction). My new novel [Donoghue's first since 2010's Room] is about a little girl in Ireland in the 1850s who doesn't eat, before anorexia was identified. Tonie van Marle, 'Emma Donoghue', in Gay and Lesbian Literature: Volume Two, ed. Donoghue has two children Finn, now six, and Una, three with her female partner Chris Roulston, a professor of women's studies at the University of Western Ontario. Emma Donoghue wonthe 2016 AWB Vincent American Ireland Funds Literary Award, and the 2011 National Lesbian and Gay Federation (Ireland) Person of the Year Award. Some would see her as physically sick, others emotionally sick, others superpowered. It didn't occur to me to classify books by the nationality of their authors; it felt as if literature in English was a big lake that I could dive into from any point on the shore. Reports that her new novel was based on the notorious Austrian kidnapping caused outrage but it's now a Booker-longlisted bestseller, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. In 2010 Knopf and Random House Canada brought out my study of a thousand years of plot motifs in Western literature, Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature, which won the Stonewall Non-Fiction Award from the American Library Association. I have edited two anthologies, Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship and Desire (UK title What Sappho Would Have Said) (1997) and The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories (1999) as well as publishing a range of scholarly articles. -, 'Donoghue's literary repertoire seems to know no bounds' -, Few writers boomerang between genres and time periods as nimbly' -, appily able to reinvent herself with everything she writes. S. Dez, "Women's Homoerotic Voice in the Works of Emma Donoghue: Discovery and Assertion", paper delivered at IASIL (1999). The first story Emma Donoghue wrote was a school essay when she was in fifth class in Mount Anville primary school. Astray was shortlisted for the 2012 Eason Irish Novel of the Year, as well as the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, and'The Hunt', one of its stories, was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. Donoghue has written novels, short story collections, drama for stage and radio, screenplays and the . Theatre has provided many of the most enjoyable moments in my career, because working with a company is so stimulating and sociable, and I get to watch my work directly affecting an audience. Do your characters take over and seem to write the book themselves? In her own words, Emma writes: "Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). Top writer Emma is 'Talk of the Town' with festival play Late eighteenth-century London, England. Slammerkin, her unlikely bestseller in 2000, was spun out of a murder on the Welsh borders in 1763, while in 2006 The Sealed Letter took a notorious Victorian divorce as its grist. - Seattle Times (2014), Donoghue is so gifted at depicting the fraught blessing of motherhood. Chicago Tribune (2014), Can inhabit any kind of fictional character and draw us into even the most unfamiliar world with her deep empathy and boundary-defying imagination. - Newsday (2012), Donoghue is one of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any tone, any atmosphere, and make it her own. Observer (2007), Her touch is so light and exuberantly inventive, her insight at once so forensic and intimate, her people so ordinary even in their oddities. Guardian (2007), A mind that can excavate characters and lives far, far beyond her own front fence. Globe and Mail (2007), Donoghue has the born storytellers knack for sketching a personality and pulling readers into a plot in just a few pages All-encompassing talent. Kirkus (2006), Emma Donoghue is distinguished by her generous sympathy for her characters, sinuous prose and an imaginative range that may soon rival that of A.S. Byatt or Margaret Atwood Has an extraordinary talent for turning exhaustive research into plausible characters and narratives; she presents a vibrant world seething with repressed feeling and class tensions. Publishers Weekly (2004), Her informed imaginings combined with her sheer cleverness and elegance as a writer breathe vivid life into real characters who heretofore resided in the footnotes of history. Irish Times (2002), Every now and again, a writer comes along with a fully loaded brain and a nature so fanciful that she simply must spin out truly original and transporting stuff Eccentric, untethered genius. Seattle Times (2002).