So I’ve written a lot about not just queer people, broadly defined, but I’ve written a lot about freaks and slaves and just anyone who’s far on the outside. And it makes them able to empathize with all those who are marginalized or abnormal or outcast. But also to make them start questioning things and analyzing things. But then at 14, when I realized I was a lesbian, that was the thing for me, that was the little wedge between me and my society, and I think everybody needs a little wedge like that to make them. When I was growing up in Dublin, my dad was a professor, and I was good in school, I had no major family problems, I was one of eight children, so it all felt very kind of solid and stable, and there was nothing that made me feel like the other or the outcast or anything. I think it probably helped turn me into a writer. You just need to play to your own strengths as a writer.įM: How does your LGBTQ+ identity affect your writing, and on the flip side, how do you think your writing affects your relationship with the LGBTQ+ reader?ĮD: Oh, interesting. And yet when I sit down to write, I seem to get very close up and shortsighted and almost slow time down and study it minute by minute. I love people like Neal Stephenson, who will be zooming all over Europe, or they’ll be in the near future, and they’ll be describing entire civilizations not yet invented. Could you elaborate on that?ĮD: Well, the books I enjoy are often written with a huge, kind of epic sweep. Ireland, history, and I quite often take a historical incident and sort of flesh it out using fiction-again, not always.įM: What makes “The Wonder” different from your other books?ĮD: I’ve never written a full-length historical novel set in Ireland, and I have to say, I so enjoyed this opportunity to get back to my home culture and really delve into its damp roots, you know?įM: You said in an interview with Scott Simon of NPR that you prefer to set your stories in a myopic or claustrophobic setting.

I would say gender shows up in all of my books, but they’re not all totally focused on women protagonists. A lot of my works have lesbian themes, but not all of my books. In the books I’ve published since my kids came along 12 years ago, I’ve written quite a lot about motherhood, but before the kids came along, not at all. I mean, there are a few things that show up, you know, like threads in the cloth, I suppose. As fans lined the sidewalk outside, Fifteen Minutes sat down with the writer to get to know more about Donoghue and her new book “The Wonder.”įM: Is there a common theme that runs through all of your works?ĮD: No, no.

Critically acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue, best known for the novel and subsequent movie “Room,” spoke at Brattle Theater on Friday night.

Emma donoghue books