Background
Emma Donoghue was born on the 24th of October 1969 in Dublin, Ireland. The youngest of eight children, she is the daughter of Frances and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue.
Emma Donoghue was born on the 24th of October 1969 in Dublin, Ireland. The youngest of eight children, she is the daughter of Frances and academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue.
Emma Donoghue has a first-class honours Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin in 1990 (in English and French) and a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Girton College, Cambridge in 1990.
Emma Donoghue has written several books, including two novels and a nonfiction history, which explore the lesbian experience, she has been open to the media about her orientation. Hailing from a very literate and literary family, Donoghue attributes to her legacy the accomplishment of having several books completed by the time she was in her mid-twenties.
In Passions between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801, Donoghue explores the role of lesbianism in early society, a trend made more difficult to study by the fact that the word lesbian was used infrequently before the twentieth century.
Donoghue's first novel was 1994's Stir Fry, a contemporary coming of age novel about a young Irish woman discovering her sexuality.
Slammerkin (2000) is a historical novel set in London and Wales. 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.
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 novel Frog Music, a historical fiction based on the true story of a murdered 19th century cross-dressing frog catcher, was published in 2014.
Her novel The Wonder, published in 2016, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Donoghue describes herself as the prayer without a church.
Donoghue describes herself as a “Leftwing liberal feminist.”
Quotations: "All writing has a political impact, and I am aware that doing interviews, etc., is my form of lesbian activism, but the motive for writing is not propaganda: I just want to tell stories in a language as powerful as I can make it."
At Cambridge, she met her future life partner 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. She lives in London, Ontario with Roulston and their two children, Finn and Una.