Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin, Emma Donoghue is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. Her 2010 novel Room sold more than two million copies and won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean). It was also shortlisted for The Booker Prize and The Women’s Prize for Fiction. Donoghue scripted the Canadian-Irish film adaptation, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Donoghue co-wrote the 2022 screen adaptation for Netflix. The Pull of the Stars was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Donoghue’s fiction ranges from the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects, Akin) to the historical (Haven, Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Astray, Frog Music) and includes two books for young readers, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More or Less.

Website: emmadonoghue.com
Instagram: @e_donoghue
Facebook: @EmmaDonoghueWriter

FESTIVAL BOOK

Learned by Heart

A heartbreakingly gorgeous novel based on the true story of two girls who fall secretly, deeply, and dangerously in love at boarding school in 19th century York, from the bestselling author of Room and The Wonder.

Drawing on years of investigation and Anne Lister’s five-million-word secret journal, Learned by Heart is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both 14.

Emotionally intense, psychologically compelling, and deeply researched, Learned by Heart is an extraordinary work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest storytellers. Full of passion and heartbreak, the tangled lives of Anne Lister and Eliza Raine form a love story for the ages.

A personal note from Emma Donoghue: “I’ve been obsessed with the puzzling and tragic fate of Anne Lister’s first lover, Eliza Raine, since writing my first play, back in 1990, which was a very loose adaptation of Helena Whitbread’s first book of selections, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840. This long-brewing novel, Learned by Heart, brings Eliza and Lister together, at 14, at the Manor School in York.”

GET THE BOOK

Shelf Life Books | Calgary Public Library | Audible

BE CURIOUSER

Wordfest Presents Emma Donoghue – Wordfest Imagine on Air
Review: Exquisite imagining of Anne Lister’s first love – The Guardian
The queer love affairs, historical and personal, that inspired Emma Donoghue’s new novel – Los Angeles Times
Emma Donoghue On The Inspiration Behind Her Gripping New Historical Romance – Chatelaine
Review: Learned by Heart – Publisher’s Weekly
Review: Learned by Heart – Kirkus Reviews
The 27 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2023 – Reader’s Digest