Irish-Canadian novelist and screenwriter Emma Donoghue is today best known for her hit novel and award-nominated film, Room. But long before Donoghue rose to prominence as a writer, she was born in 1969 in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from the University College Dublin with her B.A., Emma went on to earn her PhD in English from Girton College in Cambridge, before publishing her first novel in her early 20’s.
Donoghue’s debut work, Stir Fry, arrived in 1994 and earned her significant acclaim; the novel was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, as its story revolved around a young woman’s early sexual discovery. The novel Hood followed in 1997, also earning accolades and a Stonewall Book Award for Literature. The novels Salmmerkin (2000), Landing (2007), and The Sealed Letter (2008) followed.
But Emma’s big breakthrough came with the novel Room, which earned Donoghue multiple awards, including the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Irish Book Award for 2010. The novel ultimately went on to spawn the film adaptation, which earned Emma Donoghue an 2015 Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, since she herself penned the script.
Since Room, Emma Donoghue has published the novel The Wonder, which arrived on shelves in 2016. In addition to novels, Donoghue has written a number of short stories, plays, and teleplays.
