Please support your local independent bookstore.  But if you would like to buy Emma Donoghue’s books online, you might like to check out the following:

www.booksense.com
(an umbrella site for independent US bookstores)
www.womeninprint.ca
(a great Vancouver-based source)
www.libertas.co.uk(a British lesbian mail-order book business)
www.libertas.co.uk
(a British lesbian mail-order book business)
www.eason.ie (a good Irish bookshop)

You can also browse and buy from her publishers’ websites:
In the US, Harcourt
and (for KISSING THE WITCH) HarperCollins

In Canada, HarperCollins Canada
and (for LANDING) Raincoast
and (for TOUCHY SUBJECTS and LIFE MASK) Penguin Canada

In the UK/Ireland, Virago



The Sealed Letter - Emma Donoghue

THE SEALED LETTER (Toronto : HarperCollins Canada, 2008, ISBN: 9781554680368; ISBN-10: 1554680360). Based on a scandal that gripped Britain in the 1860s, this domestic thriller explores a feminist spinster’s reluctant involvement in a sordid divorce.  Harcourt will publish THE SEALED LETTER in the US in September 2008.

 ‘A thoroughly riveting courtroom drama… Juicy, vicious, elegant and thoughtful.’ - GLOBE AND MAIL

‘She makes 150-year-old events immediate, evoking hot, sweaty flesh under rustling layers of bombazine and conveying a powerful sense of vertigo as her characters pitch headlong into the abyss of notoriety… What could have been mere Victorian melodrama resonates here with emotional truth.’ – QUILL AND QUIRE

‘It is what Donoghue does with the facts that makes her book interesting and surprisingly relevant in our own times … an engaging narrative that subtly delivers a history lesson in the form of entertainment.’- NATIONAL POST

‘Donoghue mines Victorian repression to fashion a very pleasurable read, creating the same kind of paradox that’s made Sarah Waters so successful…The writing here is terrific and the characters are complex.’ – NOW MAGAZINE

‘A smartly constructed tale of betrayal… No character is outside the author's realm of concern: no one is pure virtue or all villain, and Donoghue makes her point as emphatically as her 19th-century predecessor [George Eliot]--here is the complex, often startling measure of being human. – WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

‘A page-turner… mesmerizing.’ – LONDON FREE PRESS


Landing a novel by Emma Donoghue

LANDING(New York : Harcourt, 2007, ISBN 0-15-101297-0, distributed in Canada by Raincoast). A contemporary love story about emigration, LANDING is set in boomtown Ireland and smalltown Canada. An unabridged audiobook of LANDING on cd, narrated by Laura Hicks, is published by BBC Audiobooks America http://www.bbcaudiobooksamerica.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=15530

 ‘Explores with a light, sure touch the subject of desire across distances of various kinds: generational, cultural, even spiritual. Donoghue handles the complexities of the women’s relationship with ease… [an] entertaining journey into what Jude calls “the intersection of love and geography.” – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

 ‘Lesbian romance goes mainstream in this charming tale… nervous and sexy and funny in the best romantic-comedy tradition… razor-sharp prose, full-bodied portraits of all the secondary characters and shrewd observations about everything… warmhearted, readable and entertaining.’ – KIRKUS

‘Donoghue’s sprightly novel is a comedy of manners, a romantic romp with a teasing twist.  Like much of the talented writer’s fiction, the book is clever, well populated with eccentric characters and full of surprises… Donoghue’s smart, sexy, wryly observed novel succeeds in catching the tenor of the times.’ – LONDON FREE PRESS

‘Emma Donoghue’s wit serves her well… a delight to read… manages to convey the strangeness, as well as the familiarity, of both Canada and Ireland, when viewed through lover’s eyes.  How moving her two lovers are, in every sense.’ – TORONTO STAR

 

Touchy Subjects

TOUCHY SUBJECTS (New York: Harcourt, 2006, ISBN 0-15-101386-1) (London: Virago (Time Warner), 2006, ISBN 1-84408-301-2, paperback 1-84408-301-5). This collection of nineteen contemporary stories about taboos and embarrassment ranges from Ireland to Louisiana, Canada to Tuscany, and includes characters old, young, queer, straight, and simply comfused. From the consequences of a polite social lie to the turmoil caused by a single hair on a woman’s chin, it dramatises the small acts upon which our lives often turn.
TOUCHY SUBJECTS was longlisted for the 2006 Frank O’Connor Short Stories Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.
‘All of Donoghue’s stories are lucid and well paced… TOUCHY SUBJECTS parades a variety of styles, but I’d say Donoghue’s greatest talent is for humor… It’s evident she likes her characters, and you probably will too.’ – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Feisty… roguish sense of play… Donoghue’s light touch can handle everything from painful bewilderment to ridiculous tiffs to unexpected happiness.’ – SEATTLE TIMES
‘Virtually every tale in Touchy Subjects is lucid, concise, clever and poignant. Roaming the globe, from many walks of life, bearing their painful and wonderful aspects alike, Donoghue's characters will remind readers of themselves in the here and now.’ - MIAMI HERALD
‘Donoghue has the born storyteller’s knack for sketching a personality and pulling readers into a plot… Delightful examples of Donoghue’s all-encompassing talent that should be read by… anyone who cherishes thoughtful, warm-hearted fiction.’ – KIRKUS
‘Wonderfully wide-ranging collection… wryly comic… no weak links.’ – LIBRARY JOURNAL
‘Without a hint of pretension but with wisdom extending far beyond the placidness of her prose style … her stories find secure footing where poignancy and humour intersect.’ - BOOKLIST
‘Both truthful and touching. She can dissect a relationship with great precision… Delightful. – TIMES
‘Excellent new collection… Her touch is so light and exuberantly inventive, her insight at once so forensic and intimate, her people so ordinary even in their oddities. … Unnervingly exact.’ – GUARDIAN
‘Donoghue is one of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any tone, any atmosphere, and make it her own. None of these stories feel as if they were written by the same person : each has a unique voice… It’s hard to outline the cleverness of these stories without giving away the twists… They are as funny as they are moving.’ - OBSERVER
‘Fizzes with affection, fun and fecundity. … there's an intimacy and immediacy about the characters that allows the reader to feel they could lean over and poke them in the arms. … Donoghue's stories demonstrate an understanding of humanity and a mind that can excavate characters and that lives far, far beyond her own front fence.’ – GLOBE AND MAIL

 

Life Mask

LIFE MASK (New York: Harcourt, 2004, ISBN 0151009430)(London: Virago (Time Warner), 2004, ISBN 1-86049-980-5).  Life Mask is about a love triangle in 1790s London, among the elite who moved through the overlapping worlds of art, politics, sport and theatre. It tells the tangled true story of three people who lived in the harsh glare of publicity: the Honourable Mrs Anne Damer (a widowed sculptor with a Sapphic reputation), the Earl of Derby (a fabulously wealthy politician who founded the Derby horserace), and Eliza Farren (the leading comedy actress on the British stage). An audiobook version of LIFE MASK, narrated by Donada Peters, is available on cassette and cd from Books On Tape / Random House at www.booksontape.com/bookdetail.cfm/6527-CD

LIFE MASK was a finalist in the 2005 Lambda and Ferro-Grumley Awards for Lesbian Fiction and the Stonewall Book Award, and was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2004 by the WASHINGTON POST.

‘Fabulously entertaining… a full-bodied tale that satisfies the head and the heart’ – KIRKUS

‘A mesmerizing new novel, which at 650 pages is like one of those great 19th-century tomes that you're sad to see come to an end.... Donoghue...has alighted on another terrific story, and she pulls off a dazzling feat of choreography in setting it all in motion. She takes obvious delight in the sumptuous details of dress and comportment, the subtle inflections in conversation and the slow blooming of erotic tension. As Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire would say, 'It was all simply ravish.'" – WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

‘A brilliantly woven tale’ – TIME OUT

‘Mesmerizing… terrific story… a dazzling feat.’ – ELLE

‘An atmosphere of passionate sensuality; small private spaces and intimate moments for the protagonists act as a counterpart to the salacious gossip and heartlessness of the wider world… It is thanks to Donoghue’s skill as a novelist that her characters are so vividly and amusingly resurrected.’ – TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘Vividly alive… complex and moving.’ – SUNDAY TIMES

 ‘Donoghue… has an extraordinary talent for turning exhaustive research into plausible characters and narratives; she presents a vibrant world seething with repressed feeling and class tensions.’ – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)

‘Wonderfully erudite and sensual.’ – BOOKS IN CANADA


The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (New York: Harcourt, 2002, ISBN 0-15-100937-6, paperback 0-15-602739-9) (London: Virago (Time Warner), 2002, ISBN 1-86049-954-6).  This is a sequence of short stories about peculiar little incidents in the history of the British Isles, from a 1300s Satanist to an 1800s animal-rights campaign.  A Dutch translation is forthcoming. The book was a finalist in the 2003 Stonewall Book Award.

‘She uses scraps of history to spin raucous, whole-cloth yarns… Earthy, exhilarating tales.’ – ELLE

‘Piercing imagery, clever plotting, splendid stories’ – TIME OUT

‘What is so astonishing about this collection is not just that the stories are exotic, though that is one of the pleasures of historical fiction. Nor is it the skill with which Donoghue revives history; the places and times and people of these tales come hurtling up off the page from the deep past with the emotional force of the newly awakened dead presenting themselves at your bedside in the middle of the night. Nor is it the pure economy of Donoghue's writing, its cleverness, its startling insights, its brisk and surprising turns, its grim humor, its sadness and tenderness. It is all those things -- which would be enough, surely -- and then something else, too. Donoghue tells these stories simply, almost conversationally, and they have the unmistakable, uncanny ring of truth … In the best of them, she shows herself to be captivated by the surprising possibilities of human nature; a loving chronicler of the physical world, especially the lost physical world of the past; and a sensitive compass in the arena of moral and emotional dilemma. And she is delightfully, sympathetically (one almost senses, helplessly) attuned to the demanding business of being alive, along with the mysterious process by which experience can be transformed into art. These stories spill their riches over the page … The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits is more than just a poised encounter with history's detritus. It is an inspired dance on the narrow and exhilarating cliff-edge of art.’ – WASHINGTON POST

‘Eccentric, untethered genius… Facts from history and fiction from Donoghue's fertile brain are then mixed and spread across a new canvas, each one an original. … Donoghue works a sorcerer's trick in these offerings -- each seems to be exactly as long as it should be.’ – SEATTLE TIMES

‘A smorgasbord of wry, robust and extraordinary tales.’ – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

‘Razor-sharp vignettes of the fates of women… You’ll think of Boccaccio and Chaucer (as well as Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood)… These jewel-like stories vibrate with thickly textured detail and vigorous period language. Donoghue’s colorful, confrontational historically based fiction is making something entirely new and captivating out of gender issues. One of the best books of the year thus far. Like Andrea Barrett, Donoghue has staked a claim to her own distinctive fictional territory.’ – KIRKUS


Slammerkin

Slammerkin (London: Virago (Little Brown), 2000; paperback ISBN 1-86049-899-X) (New York: Harcourt, 2000; paperback ISBN 0-15-600747-9).   Inspired by a murder that took place in the Welsh Borders in 1763, Slammerkin (meaning a loose dress, and a loose woman) is Donoghue's first historical novel, a gripping study of a prostitute obsessed with clothes. It was a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club, a finalist in the 2001 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction, a Barnes and Noble Discover Selection, a Book Sense 76 Selection, and one of the Notable Books of 2001 chosen by Publishers Weekly and the New York Times.  SLAMMERKIN has also been published in Dutch and Greek and is forthcoming in Portuguese.

‘What a great read this book is: Think Forever Amber skewed with an elegant noir twist and informed by a high literary intelligence. … This absorbing, bawdy novel gives new meaning to the term costume drama. By all means, try it on for size.’ – WASHINGTON POST

‘Emma Donoghue’s heady, colorful romp of a novel [is] almost impossible to resist.’ – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘Absorbing, moving and intelligent… her writing is suffused with sensuality and sharp emotion.’ - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘Donoghue has made of an ‘obscure and brutal story’ a compelling novel, her best to date, and a brilliant historical variant on the ‘girl about town’ novels that currently fill the bookshops.’ – FINANCIAL TIMES

‘A rock-solid novel of class conflict and desire.’ – NOW MAGAZINE
 


Kissing the Witch


Kissing the Witch (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997; Penguin paperback ISBN 0-14-025802-7 (out of print) (US title KISSING THE WITCH: OLD TALES IN NEW SKINS, New York: Joanna Cotler Books (a Young Adult imprint within HarperCollins), 1997, paperback ISBN 0064407721).  Kissing the Witch is a sequence of thirteen re-imagined fairytales, inspired by traditional European sources (Brothers Grimm, Perrault, Hans Anderson). Published for adults in the UK and for young adults in the US, it was shortlisted for a James Tiptree Award, and named an ALA Popular Paperback for Young Adults. KISSING THE WITCH has also been published in Dutch and Catalan and is forthcoming in Italian.

'Kissing the Witch is written with luscious words you want to roll around on your tongue... Donoghue transmutes base vignettes into gold.' – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘These bold rewritings of fairy tales from the perspectives of their female protagonists are salvaged from the political soap-box by Donoghue's sense of humour and delight in the rhythmic mythologies of the genre. ... An original and playful endeavour.' – GUARDIAN

'A daring, woman-identified revisitation of fairytale land ... a book to be read for its language, for an altered perception, given as a gift between lovers.' – IRISH TIMES

'Stunning tales... The shock of self-determination, the courage it demands, and the poignant hope of finding yourself created new in the love of another - these are truths profound, universal and certainly not gender-specific.' – BOSTON GLOBE

‘Original and playful’ – GUARDIAN

‘A dark jewel.' - KIRKUS

'A daring, woman-identified revisitation of fairytale land ... a book to be read for its language, for an altered perception, given as a gift between lovers.' – IRISH TIMES
 


Hood

HOOD (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995, Penguin paperback ISBN 0-14-
023084-X [out of print]) (New York: HarperCollins, 1996; Alyson paperback ISBN 1-55583-453-1.[out of print])  Winner of the 1997 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature. Hood is a novel about bereavement and the closet, which follows Pen, a Dublin schoolteacher, through the first week after the death of her on-off lover of thirteen years, Cara.  HOOD has also been published in Dutch, Swedish, and Hebrew and is forthcoming in French.

'Hood is thoroughly contemporary in how richly it depicts a beloved's death to review a couple's bumpy love history...This book's real pleasures lie in its intimate insights, its accurate characters and its sharp, rich observations... the greatest achievement of Hood is how it captures the domesticity of erotic passion' – BOSTON GLOBE

'Donoghue negotiates this territory deftly and with rather startling humour... It is Pen's winning sanity and avid eye for absurdity - in the Church and in the bedroom - that keeps this confident, touching novel afloat.' – INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'Utterly charming.' – NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
 


Stirfry

STIRFRY (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994, Penguin paperback ISBN 0-14-023083-1 [out of print]) (New York: HarperCollins, 1994; Alyson paperback ISBN 1-55583-723-9 [out of print].) Lambda Literary Award Finalist 1994. Stirfry is a coming-of-age novel about Maria, a seventeen-year-old girl from rural Ireland who comes to university in Dublin and accidentally moves in with a lesbian couple.  Stirfry has also been published in Dutch, German and Spanish and is forthcoming in Italian.

‘With this clever, interesting and very assured first novel Donoghue has put down a marker for the so-called New Ireland.' – TIMES

‘Stirfry is a coming-out story, but only in the
sense that OEDIPUS REX is a murder mystery or the ODYSSEY is a travelogue.’ – LESBIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS

'This evocative and insightful novel is destined to become a classic in lesbian literature' – VILLAGE VOICE



    LICHTEKOOI [SLAMMERKIN] (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 2001), ISBN 90-450-0471-2

    EEN KUS VOOR DE HEKS [KISSING THE WITCH] (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 1997), ISBN 90-254-2243-8

    VERLIES [HOOD] (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 1996), ISBN 90-254-0526-6

    GEROERD [STIRFRY] (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 1994), ISBN 90-254-0591-6


    ZARTES GEMUSE, SCHARF GEWURZT [STIRFRY] (Dusseldorf: Econ, 1996), ISBN 3-612-27248-9

    'Die Geschichte Vom Kuss' [‘The Tale of the Kiss’] , LICHTUNGEN 82/XXI.Jg./2000

    'Die Namen der Dinge' [‘Words for Things’], DIE ANDERE SEITE DER NACHT: LASTER, LUST UND LIEDERLICHE SCHRIFTEN, Roger Willemsen (Hrsg.) (Berlin: Ullstein, 1998)




    FORLUST [HOOD]  (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1998), ISBN 91-1-300321-6



    BESAR LA BRUIXA: CONTES VELLS AMB VESTIT NOU [KISSING THE WITCH] (Barcelona: Laertes, 2000),
    ISBN 84-7584-436-7

    UN BUEN SALTEADO [STIRFRY] (Barcelona-Madrid: Egales, 2003), ISBN 84-95346-44-3



KISUI (HOOD) (Tel Aviv: Alternativot, 2002)



‘Here and Now’ in NO MARGINS: WRITING CANADIAN FICTION IN LESBIAN, ed. Nairne Holtz and Catherine Lake (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2006). This story of a weekend in small-town Ontario is excerpted from Donoghue’s novel LANDING.

‘The Dormition of the Virgin’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). This comic tale of an earnest English student’s frantic tour of Florentine Renaissance churches is about life vrs art.

‘Baggage’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006), follows a Limerick woman to LA for one long hot weekend in search of her missing brother.

‘WritOr’ [sic], in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Prompted by some of Donoghue’s less happy experiences of teaching creative writing, this is about an existential crisis in the life of a Writer in Residence.

‘Lavender’s Blue’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Another autobiographical story, this one is about a couple with the painful dilemma of choosing a paint colour.

‘Through the Night’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Sparked off by Donoghue’s experience of having a baby, ‘Through the Night’ satirises both sides of the mother/grandmother generation gap.

‘The Man Who Wrote on Beaches’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). A study of a Born Again man who decides that Jesus wants him to marry his forty-two-year-old girlfriend and have children.

Do They Know It’s Christmas’, in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). This story about the family of nature and the nature of family is adapted from a short radio play, part of Donoghue’s Humans and Other Animals series (2003), produced by Tanya Nash for BBC Radio 4.

‘Good Deed’, in RUSH HOUR: A JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY VOICES, Volume One, ed. by Michael Cart (New York: Delacorte Press, 2004)); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006).  A Good Samaritan in present-day Toronto tries to save the life of a street person.

‘The Sanctuary of Hands’, in TELLING MOMENTS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LESBIAN SHORT STORIES, ed. by Lynda Hall (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). An Irishwoman has an embarrassing encounter in a prehistoric French cave.

‘Necessary Noise’, in NECESSARY NOISE, ed. by Michael Cart (New York: Joanna Cottler Books, 2003); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). The Bible story of Martha, Mary and Lazarus transposed to modern New York.

‘Pluck’, in THE DUBLIN REVIEW (Autumn 2002); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006)‘Pluck’, about an Irishman’s panic over a hair on his girlfriend’s chin, is the story on which Donoghue’s short film of the same name (2001) was based.

'Team Men', in ONE HOT SECOND: STORIES OF DESIRE, ed. by Cathy Young (New York: Knopf, 2002); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Donoghue’s first (and probably only!) sports story, set on a boys’ soccer team, is based on the Bible characters of Saul, David and Jonathan, and was written with quantities of help from Sinéad McBrearty.

'Enchantment,' in MAGIC, edited by Sarah Brown and Gil McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2002); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Triggered by a holiday in Louisiana, this is about a battle between two swamp tour guides.

'The Welcome', in LOVE AND SEX, ed. by Michael Cart (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Inspired by Donoghue’s fond memories of six years in a Cambridge housing cooperative, this is a love story with a twist.

'Thicker Than Water', in THICKER THAN WATER: COMING-OF-AGE STORIES BY IRISH AND IRISH-AMERICAN WRITERS, ed. by Gordon Snell (New York: Delacorte Press, 2001; London: Orion, 2002.) The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, transfered to a Belfast wedding.

'Oops', in SUNDAY EXPRESS (UK), 2000; ; a longer version collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). A short comedy about a Dublin bachelor who thinks he’s made his friend pregnant by fiddling with her electronic contraceptive device.

'The Cost of Things' in THE DIVA BOOK OF SHORT STORIES (London: Diva Books, 2000); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). A highly autobiographical story about two Canadian dykes, their cat and a vet’s bill.

'Speaking in Tongues', in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF LESBIAN EROTICA, ed. by Rose Collis (London: Constable & Robinson and New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Set at a Galway conference on bilingualism, this is about a May-December one-night-stand, but it’s more edgy romance than erotica.

‘Error Messages', broadcast on RTE Radio (Ireland), 1999. A story in five emails about a family facing the Millennium.

'Touchy Subjects' in LADIES' NIGHT AT FINBAR'S HOTEL, a novel-in-stories, co-written by Emma Donoghue and six other Irish writers, edited by Dermot Bolger (London: Macmillan, and Dublin; New Island, and San Diego and New York: Harcourt, 1999); collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Donoghue’s contribution to the second of the bestselling Finbar’s Hotel books is about a man attempting to donate sperm to his wife’s best friend.

'Expecting', broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 1996; also published online in Book Data, November 1997; first print publication YOU MAGAZINE / MAIL ON SUNDAY (UK) 8 October 2000; collected in TOUCHY SUBJECTS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2006). Donoghue’s first story broadcast on radio, about a woman who gets entangled in a lie about being pregnant.

'Seven Pictures Not Taken', in CIMARRON REVIEW, 116 (July 1996); also in THE ANCHOR BOOK OF NEW IRISH WRITING, ed. by John Somer and John J. Daly (New York: Anchor Books, 2000). A prickly romance between two middleaged woman, one Irish, one American.

'Going Back', in IRELAND IN EXILE, ed. by Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, 1993); also in ALTERNATIVE LOVES: IRISH GAY AND LESBIAN STORIES, ed. by David Marcus (Dublin: Martello, 1994); also in COUNTERING THE MYTHS: LESBIANS WRITE ABOUT THE MEN IN THEIR LIVES, ed. by Rosamund Elwin (Toronto: Women's Press, 1996); also in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF IRISH FICTION, ed. by Colm Toibin (London: Penguin, 1999). One of Donoghue’s first (and most) published short stories, this account of a fag-dyke friendship was written on the cusp of enormous social change in Ireland.


‘Snowblind’, in THE FABER BOOK OF BEST NEW IRISH SHORT STORIES, ed. by David Marcus (London: Faber, 2007). A fictional tale of two young men who become goldmining ‘partners’ in the 1890s Klondike.

‘What the Driver Saw’ is a fresh take on Isadora Duncan’s much-mythologised death by scarf in Nice in 1927.  It is published online as part of a research project on the theme of the royal entrance by GRES (Groupe de Recherche Sur les Entrées Solennelles), see http://gres.concordia.ca/ecrire/index.shtml

‘Vanitas’ in LIKE A CHARM: A NOVEL IN VOICES (London: Century and New York: William Morrow, 2004). In Donoghue’s contribution to this bestselling crime collection, a girl in 1830s Louisiana probes her cousin’s mysterious death.

Acts of Union' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). In Mayo in the early 1800s, an army officer is tricked into a fraudulent marriage.

'Account' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New
York: Harcourt, 2002). A story in an experimental list format, about a king's mistress who died mysteriously in 1490s Scotland.

‘Ballad’ in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). Inspired by the old folk song of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, this is about war, plague and a love triangle in Methven, Scotland in 1645.

'Come, Gentle Night' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). A painful comedy about the wedding night of John Ruskin and Effie Gray in Scotland in 1848.

'Cured' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). Based on the case notes of the controversial surgeon Isaac Baker Brown in 1860s London.

'Dido' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). In Hampstead in the 1770s, a mixed-race girl, raised by her great-uncle, discovers what life is like outside the garden wall.

'The Last Rabbit' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). The story of Mary Toft, who in 1720s Surrey managed to hoax all of England by claiming to have given birth to eighteen rabbits.

'The Necessity of Burning' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). A female brewer gets caught up in the Peasants Revolt in Cambridge in the 1380s.

'Revelations' in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). Narrated by a maverick Presbyterian minister, this is the story of a Scottish cult's attempt to fast for forty days in Dumfriesshire in 1786.

‘Salvage’ in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). Set on the storm-swept Norfolk Coast in 1823, when a crippled lady scholar of Anglo-Saxon intervened to save drowning sailors.

'Sissy', in GLOBE AND MAIL (Canada), 5 May 2001. This story was commissioned in response to a controversy over the unearthing of a pioneer child’s coffin during the building of a hockey arena in London, Ontario.

'What Remains', in QUEENS QUARTERLY (Canada), Spring 2001, and THE JOURNEY PRIZE ANTHOLOGY (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2002). A biographical story about the last years of the sculptor couple, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle.

‘The Lost Seed’, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2000; published in GROUNDSWELL: THE DIVA BOOK OF SHORT STORIES 2 (London: Diva Books, 2002). A tragedy based on court records of sex crimes in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.

'Night Vision' broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2000; published in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS (London: Virago and New York: Harcourt, 2002). Set in Donegal in 1824, this is about a blind girl who fought for the right to educate herself.

'Figures of Speech', broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2000; published in THE LADY (21-27 August 2001); collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. In Genoa in 1632, an Irish countess, facing childbirth, looks back at her turbulent past.

'A Short Story,' broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2000; published in a limited-edition calendar from Language (Dublin, 2001); collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. About the brief life of Caroline Crachami, the world's shortest girl - a popular freak-show attraction until her death in London in 1823.

'The Fox on the Line', in CIRCA 2000: LESBIAN FICTION AT THE
MILLENNIUM, ed. by Terry Wolverton and Robert Drake (LA: Alyson, 2000); collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. Set in London in the 1870s, this story about the moment when two women tried to get vivisection banned.

'How a Lady Dies', in HERS 3: BRILLIANT NEW FICTION BY LESBIAN
WRITERS, ed. by Terry Wolverton with Robert Drake (New York: Faber and Faber, 1999); collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. The story of a consumptive gentlewoman with a death-wish in 1759 Bath.

'Looking for Petronilla', in THE VINTAGE BOOK OF INTERNATIONAL
LESBIAN FICTION, ed. by Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle (New York: Vintage, 1999); also in THE STINGING FLY (Dublin), Issue 11, Winter 2001/2002; collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. A contemporary woman goes to Kilkenny in search of traces of Petronilla de Meath, the fourteenth-century maid of Ireland's most famous witch.

'Daddy's Girl', in NEON LIT: TIME OUT BOOK OF NEW WRITING, ed. by
Nicholas Royle (London: Quartet, 1998); broadcast on BBC Radio 4, May 2000. Based on the 1901 death of Murray Hall, a New York politico who turned out to be a woman.

'Counting the Days', in PHOENIX IRISH SHORT STORIES 1998, ed. by David
Marcus (London: Phoenix House, 1998); broadcast on CBC Radio (Canada), May 2001. Based on the 1840s correspondence of two emigrants from Northern Ireland to Canada.

'Words for Things', in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF LESBIAN SHORT STORIES,
ed. by Margaret Reynolds (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993); also in THE OXFORD BOOK OF HISTORICAL STORIES, ed. by Michael Cox and Jack Adrian (London: Oxford University Press, 1994); collected in THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS. In Cork in 1786, a teenage girl forms a complex bond with her governess, one Mistress Mary Wollstonecraft. Donoghue’s first historical short story is now on several university curricula.
 

‘The Tale of the Shoe’, in KISSING THE WITCH (London: Virago, and New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 1997). Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Cinderella.

‘The Tale of the Bird’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on Hans Andersen’s Thumbelina.

‘The Tale of the Rose’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on Madame le Prince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast.

‘The Tale of the Apple’ in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Snow White.

‘The Tale of the Handkerchief’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of the Goose Girl.

‘The Tale of the Hair’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Rapunzel.

‘The Tale of the Brother’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on Hans Andersen’s Snow Queen.

‘The Tale of the Spinster’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Rumpelstilskin and similar stories of magical helpers.

‘The Tale of the Cottage’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Hansel and Gretel.

‘The Tale of the Skin’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on the Grimms’ folk tale of Donkeyskin.

‘The Tale of the Needle’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty.

‘The Tale of the Voice’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Based on Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid.

‘The Tale of the Kiss’, in KISSING THE WITCH. Not based on any source text, but suggested by various folk motifs about oracles and magic helpers, discussed in Marina Warner’s FROM THE BEAST TO THE BLONDE.
 



‘Doing Lesbian History, Then and Now’, in HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS / REFLEXIONS HISTORIQUES (Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring 2007)

Introduction to Virago Modern Classics edition of Polly Devlin, ALL OF US THERE (London: Virago, 2003)

Editor of section, ‘LESBIAN ENCOUNTERS, 1746-1997’in THE FIELD DAY ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH WRITING VOLS IV and V: IRISH WOMEN’S WRITING AND TRADITIONS (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002)

Introduction to Virago Modern Classics edition of Molly Keane, TIME AFTER TIME (London: Virago, 2001)

Articles on ‘Anne Lister’, ‘Ladies of Llangollen’, and ‘Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods’, in LESBIAN HISTORIES AND CULTURES: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, ed. by Bonnie Zimmerman (New York and London: Garland, 2000)

We Are Michael Field

WE ARE MICHAEL FIELD (Bath: Absolute Press and New York: Stuart, Tabori and Chang, 1998, paperback ISBN 1-899791-66-3). The first biography since the 1920s of the Victorian collaborative writers and lovers (as well as aunt and niece), Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote under the name Michael Field. The book is based on twenty-five years of unpublished diaries as well as their complete work in poetry and drama.

‘This short biography is both an education and a joy.' – OUT MAGAZINE

‘Reads like one of the better Merchant-Ivory screenplays: a comedy of manners, obsession and art, with twin heroines heroic one moment and foolish the next, plus a supporting cast that includes John Ruskin, Bernhard Berenson and Oscar Wilde.' – ADVOCATE

‘A Tale of Two Annies’, in BUTCH/FEMME: INSIDE LESBIAN GENDER, ed. by Sally Munt (London: Cassell, 1998)

'How Could I Fear and Hold Thee by the Hand? The Poetry of Eva Gore-Booth,' in SEX, NATION AND DISSENT IN IRISH WRITING, ed. by Eibhear Walshe (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997)

'Liberty in Chains: The Diaries of Anne Lister (1817-24),' in BREAKING THE BARRIERS TO DESIRE (Nottingham: Five Leaves Press, 1995)

'Noises from Woodsheds: The Muffled Voices of Irish Lesbian Fiction,' in VOLCANOES AND PEARL DIVERS, ed. by Suzanne Raitt (London: Onlywomen Press, 1994); adapted version in LESBIAN AND GAY VISIONS OF IRELAND: TOWARDS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, ed. by Ide O'Carroll and Eoin Collins (London: Cassell, 1995).

 

Passions Between Women

PASSIONS BETWEEN WOMEN: BRITISH LESBIAN CULTURE 1668-1801 (London: Scarlet Press, 1993, paperback ISBN 1-85727-046-0) (New York: HarperCollins, 1995, paperback ISBN 0-06-092680-5). Donoghue's first book is a groundbreaking survey of printed texts on lesbian themes (trial records, newspapers, medical tracts, poems, novels, plays, etc) that were published in English between the Restoration and the end of the eighteenth century.  It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards.

'Outstanding and essential' ­ THE PINK PAPER

'A well-researched book that brings out a great many fictional and real-life lesbians from the past... more than a little eye- and ear-opening.' ­ THE WASHINGTON POST

'Out of Order: Kate O'Brien's Lesbian Fictions,' in ORDINARY PEOPLE DANCING, ed. by Eibhear Walsh (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993)



    Guest editor of BEST LESBIAN EROTICA 2007 (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2007), ed. Tristan Taormino. This anthology was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in the erotica category.

     

    The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Short Stories

    THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF LESBIAN SHORT STORIES (London: Robinson Publishing, and New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999, paperback ISBN 0-7867-0627-9). Lambda Literary Award Finalist 1999. Donoghue’s anthology of lesbian-themed stories in English from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

    ‘The twenty-nine authors collected here come from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, South Africa, Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to the US, and expand this reader’s sense of the reach of the lesbian imagination.’ – LAMBDA BOOK REPORT

    ‘Perhaps the best and widest-ranging of recent anthologies’ – AMAZON.COM (EDITORIAL REVIEW)

     

    What Sappho Would Have Said

    WHAT SAPPHO WOULD HAVE SAID: FOUR CENTURIES OF LOVE POEMS BETWEEN WOMEN (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997), US title POEMS BETWEEN WOMEN: FOUR CENTURIES OF LOVE, ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP AND DESIRE (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, paperback ISBN 0-231-10925-3). Lambda Literary Award Finalist 1997. Donoghue’s anthology brings famous names like Emily Dickinson and Adrienne Rich together with a host of unknown and forgotten women (not all lesbians, by any means) writing love poems to women in English all across the globe, since the 1650s.

    'A refreshingly eclectic and intelligently edited collection of love poems ... what a treat to see work by so many writers who will be unfamiliar to most.' – GAY TIMES

    ‘Her introduction, dazzling in its range and scope, places in sharp focus the matrix of women's lives, socially and emotionally, over four centuries... Her succinct, vivid biographies of the individual poets offer fascinating illustration and amplification of how these women lived. This outstanding collection showcases the eloquence and passion and yearning of 106 poets.' – SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER AND CHRONICLE


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN (Dublin: New Island Press, 1998, paperback ISBN 1-874597-70-7). Donoghue's second work for theatre was premiered by Glasshouse Productions at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre on 18 April 1996, and received its US premiere at Outward Spiral Theatre, Minneapolis, on 14 April 2000; it was produced in San Francisco in 2003 by the Shee Theatre Company. A memory play in which a vaudeville star on the night of her final comeback relives her two marriages (one to a man, one to a woman), LADIES AND GENTLEMEN was inspired by the late nineteenth-century male impersonator Annie Hindle.

'Extraordinary love story... she tells it wonderfully: simply, tenderly and eloquently... it grabs the interest, the pace never flags' – SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN plays wonderful theatrical games, gently blurring the sexual boundaries... a deeply satisfying and moving meditation on life in love and theatre’ – SUNDAY TRIBUNE

‘A must-see for anyone who enjoys a good, tragic love story, and a sure thing for those seeking the emotional purge of laughter through tears.’ – SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN is available in paperback from New Island Books (Ireland).

I KNOW MY OWN HEART, in SEEN AND HEARD: SIX NEW PLAYS BY IRISH WOMEN, ed. by Cathy Leeney (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2001, 0-9534-2573-8). Donoghue's first play, which was premiered by Glasshouse Productions at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre in March 1993, is very loosely based on Helena Whitbread's book of the same name (Virago, 1988), a selection of the secret diaries (1817-24) of Regency lesbian eccentric Anne Lister.

'A witty, humorous and affectionate celebration of this fiercely independent and self-aware woman' – SUNDAY TRIBUNE

I KNOW MY OWN HEART is available in the anthology SEEN AND HEARD from Carysfort Press (Ireland).

DON’T DIE WONDERING. The one-act stage version of Donoghue’s radio drama premiered at the Second Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in a production by DAYMS at the Teacher’s Club, 14-16 May 2005.

KISSING THE WITCH. Donoghue's adaptation of her fairy-tale book of the same name (1997) was commissioned by and premiered at San Francisco's Magic Theatre on 9 June 2000. It received its first Canadian production at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto in March 2002.

 



 

PLUCK, a ten-minute short, by Language in association with RTE, the Irish Film Board and Zanzibar Productions. A tale of a man’s obsession with a hair on his girlfriend’s chin. Directed by Neasa Hardiman, produced by Vanessa Finlow, Ireland, 2001.


MIX (BBC Radio 3, 5 November 2003), an hour-long play about a Northern Irish thirteen-year-old girl who discovers that she has a rare intersexed condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
‘Touching, funny.’ – THE GUARDIAN

HUMANS AND OTHER ANIMALS (BBC Radio 4, 10-14 March 2003), a series of five fifteen-minute plays about what animals mean to people. A RADIO TIMES Choice and the DAILY MAIL’s Pick of the Week.  ‘The Great Escape’ features a runaway rabbit who disrupts two pensioners’ lives; ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ is about an academic couple who insist that his parents should ‘love me, love my dog’; in ‘The Call of the Wild’, a girl struggles with the mysterious behaviour of her animal-rights activist boyfriend; ‘The Cost of Things’, based on Donoghue’s story of the same name, presents the domestic drama sparked off by a vet’s bill; ‘Metamorphosis’ is about a stubborn child who claims to have turned into a horse.
‘Beautiful little vignettes… warm and delicately humorous.’ – RADIO TIMES

EXES (BBC Radio 4, 2001), a series of five fifteen-minute plays about relations between ex-lovers and ex-spouses. ‘Urban Myths’ is about a separated woman writing a thesis on sexual revenge; ‘The Modern Family’ is about the two fathers (biological and non) of a newborn; ‘The Conspiracy’ is about a man getting paranoid about his current girlfriend’s friendship with his last girlfriend; ‘The Mothers’ is about two women fighting over custody of their son; in ‘The Estate Agent’, a couple wanting to buy a house find themselves in the office of his ex.

DON’T DIE WONDERING (BBC Radio 4, 2000), a fifty-minute romantic comedy set in contemporary small-town Ireland, about a lesbian chef who stages a one-woman picket to get her job back.

TRESPASSES
(RTE, 1996), a fifty-minute play set in the Irish town of Youghal in the 1660s, inspired by the records of a witch trial.




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