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Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). I attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 I earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). I moved to England, and in 1997 received my PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a single summer month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Chris Roulston and our son Finn and daughter Una.

Autobiographical Pieces

Piece about birth of a first child in The Day that Changed My Life: Inspirational Stories from Irish Women, ed. Caitlin McBride (Black and White, 2019).

'Her own mother raised a family of eight', https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7479147/EMMA-DONOGHUE-recalls-joyous-1950s-diaries-family-life-taught-mother.html

'Emma Donoghue: My curiosity flares up when I hear about...', Macleans, 5 November 2016, http://www.macleans.ca/culture/emma-donoghue-my-curiosity-flares-up-when-i-hear-about/

The Donor', Harper's Magazine (August 2015), http://harpers.org/archive/2015/08/the-donor/

On how creativity is like sex: http://thewalrus.ca/tv-juices-flowing/

Convocation speech (a life in limericks), Western University, 17 June 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMDwRWGAjxU

'It was a radical way to live' (memories of my Cambridge housing co-op), Sunday Times (Ireland), 19 May 2013

‘I’m sick of all this mutual surveillance – let’s put a stop to the Mummy Wars’, Guardian, 23 April 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/23/emma-donoghue-mummy-wars-parenting

‘Once Upon a Life’, Observer, 5 Sept 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/05/once-upon-life-emma-donoghue

‘Lesbian Mums’, Times, 7 August 2010

‘The Little Voices In Our Heads That Last a Lifetime’, Irish Times, 7 August 2010

‘Go On, You Choose’, in Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, ed. Rachel Epstein (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2009)

‘A Free Space,’ in From Newman to New Woman: UCD Women Remember, ed. by Anne Macdona (Dublin: New Island, 2001)

'Proving It,' Siren (Toronto), October 1998

'The Youngest Child,' Women’s News (Belfast), November 1997

'A Pagan Place,' Gay Community News (Ireland), February 1996

‘Coming Out a Bit Strong’, Index on Censorship, 24, No. 1 (1995): 87-88