Shaping Stories for Stage, Page and Screen

Emma Donoghue is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. Her novel Room has sold almost three million copies, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. Emma scripted the film adaptation, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and she co-wrote the screen adaptation of the Netflix film which starred Florence Pugh. The Pull of the Stars was nominated for the Trillium Book Award and Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2025 she wrote the #1 National Bestseller The Paris Express, a historical thriller. Emma’s fiction ranges from the contemporary to the historical and includes two books for young readers.

Emma Donoghue turned a set of 19th-century immigrant love letters into a folk musical, The Wind Coming Over the Sea, at Blyth Festival in the summer of 2025 and she is the screenwriter for the film H is for Hawk in 2026.