Emma Donoghue is a playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. She is best known for Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Donoghue received her B.A. in English and French from University College Dublin and her Ph.D. in English from Girton College at Cambridge.