“From the age of 23,” says author Emma Donoghue, “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.”

Emma’s passion for writing is clear — she has tried her hand at everything from kidlit, YA, historical and contemporary fiction, literary history, screenplays, playwriting, and radio drama, and has won countless awards in the process. She experienced phenomenal success with Room in 2010, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Prize for Fiction, amongst other accolades.

Emma later adapted the book into an Oscar award-winning film. Her screenplay was nominated for its own Oscar and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as over a dozen other awards. Another novel, The Pull of the Stars was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Her latest book is the gorgeous work of historical fiction, Learned by Heart. Through careful research, Emma unburies the true love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, (later dubber the first modern lesbian) meet at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York in 1805.

After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, Emma eventually settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and two children.

Emma’s appearance is supported by Author Patron Kimberley Falk

Appearing in 2. Deep and Dangerous Love