Dr Emma Donoghue

UCD Alumni Award in Arts and Humanities 2024

BA English & French 1990

Dublin-born award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, Dr Emma Donoghue became a Canadian citizen in 2004. Her latest novel Learned by Heart (2023) is set in 1805 and inspired by the extraordinary regency diarist Anne Lister. Room (2010) was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes and has sold almost three million copies.

Emma adapted it into her first feature film, Room, which was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actress (won by lead, Brie Larson). The Wonder (2016, a finalist for Canada’s Giller Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year), is about a ‘fasting girl’ in 19th-century Ireland and the English nurse sent to watch her.

Emma adapted it into the 2022 film starring Florence Pugh Haven (2022) was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. Set in Dublin during the Great Flu pandemic in 1918 (and written before Covid-19), The Pull of the Stars (2020) was adapted for theatre in 2024. Emma’s work also includes historical novels Frog Music, The Sealed Letter, Life Mask, Slammerkin, and contemporary novels Akin, Landing, Hood and Stir-fry, as well as short-story collections, literary history and two anthologies.