Emma Donoghue is having a wonderful year. The writer, and now award-winning screenwriter, is sharing her good fortune with the ImagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival.
The Irish-Canadian author is donating the $20,000 cash prize she won with the 2016 Golden Box Office Award. The award goes to “the Canadian or majority Canadian co-production English-language feature film that performed exceptionally well at the box office in the previous calendar year, earning at least $1 million.”
“I’m so aware that you need help to get into an industry that can seem like it has closed walls.”
Donoghue is the woman behind “Room” which was a hit first, as a novel, and the film adaptation, which she co-wrote, did exceptionally well beyond also, and, earned Brie Larson the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performance as a mother in captivity raising a young son.
Donaghue, originally from Dublin, now lives in London, Ontario. She told reporters that she wanted to give back to the industry and do her bit to make it better. ‘Room’ amassed nine trophies at Sunday night’s Canadian Screen Awards.
“I think everyone can agree that this particular year there’s no doubt that how to make the film industry better is to make it more diverse,” said Donoghue. “And as a woman entering into screenwriting, where we are probably a minority compared with men, I’m so aware that you need help to get into an industry that can seem like it has closed walls.”
Meanwhile, Donoghue continues work on a variety of projects, including further film work, with a screenplay from her 2014 novel, Frog Music. Set in the late 1800’s in San Francisco, the work is based on the true story of French burlesque dancer Blanche Beunon and the murder of her cross-dressing female friend, Jenny Bonnet.
Donoghue is also at work on the adaptation of someone else’s book for the BBC, but cannot yet reveal the details. And her first children’s book is expected in spring 2017. Titled, The Lotterys Plus One. the story is about a family of four parents and seven kids who take in a grandfather with dementia, a condition Donoghue’s mother has. It is set in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.
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