On 2 November 2010, it was announced that Room had been awarded the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. On 27 July 2010, Donoghue's novel Room was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and on 7 September 2010 it made the shortlist. 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. The Sealed Letter (2008), another work of historical fiction, is based on the Codrington Affair, a scandalous divorce case that gripped Britain in 1864.

Her 2007 novel, Landing, portrays a long-distance relationship between a Canadian curator and an Irish flight attendant. It was a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction and was awarded the 2002 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction (despite a lack of lesbian content). Inspired by an 18th-century newspaper story about a young servant who killed her employer and was executed, the protagonist is a prostitute who longs for fine clothes. Slammerkin (2000) is a historical novel set in London and Wales. 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. Influences and approach to writing ĭonoghue has spoken of the importance of the writing of Emily Dickinson, of Jeanette Winterson's novel The Passion and Alan Garner's Red Shift in the development of her work. She lives in London, Ontario, with Roulston and their two children. They moved permanently to Canada in 1998 and Donoghue became a Canadian citizen in 2004. Īt 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. Her thesis was on friendship between men and women in 18th-century fiction. While at Cambridge she lived in a women's co-operative, an experience which inspired her short story 'The Welcome'.

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. The youngest of eight children, she is the daughter of Frances (born Rutledge) and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.ĭonoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1969. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Novelist, short story writer, playwright, literary historianĮmma Donoghue (born 24 October 1969) is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter.

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