Emma Donoghue biography, plus links to book reviews and book excerpts from books by Emma Donoghue.

Emma Donoghue Biography

Emma Donoghue is an award-winning Irish writer who lives in Canada. At 38, she has published seven novels, three books of short stories, two works of literary history, two anthologies and two plays.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on 24 October 1969, Emma is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Since the age of 23, Donoghue has earned her living as a full-time writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her lover and their son and daughter.

Her novels to date are:

• Stir-fry (1994): A coming of age story set against the backdrop of university life in Dublin.
• Hood (1995): A tale of love between two Catholic women in Ireland.
• Slammerkin (2000): About a poor young girl living in 1760s London who turns to prostitution to improve the quality of her life. Inspired by the real-life Mary Saunders, this is Donoghue's first foray into historical fiction and the novel that put her on the literary map.
• Life Mask (2004): A fictional recreation, set in 18th century England, of a plausible but unproven love triangle between actress Eliza Farren, sculptor Anne Damer and Edward Smith-Stanley, the twelfth Earl of Derby.
• Landing (2007): A contemporary romantic comedy that explores the pleasures and sorrows of long-distance relationships.
• The Sealed Letter (2008): A povocative drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864.
• Room (2010)

This biography was last updated on 09/15/2010.

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