Dear and Best Friends

Emma Donoghue

7:00pm

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

60 mins

From the best-selling author of Room and The Wonder comes a love story for the ages – and at the centre of it all, a woman who truly knew her own heart.

Drawing on the real life correspondences and five-million-word secret diary of troublesome 19th century tomboy Anne Lister, Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, Learned By Heart, leaves no room for doubt that the love between Anne and heiress Eliza Raine was deeper and more complex than any love between ‘best friends’.

In this unmissable conversation, Emma Donoghue reveals the meticulous research that shaped the book and why Anne Lister has been an ongoing source of inspiration over the years.

Moderated by Judith Pereira.

This event will be followed by a book signing.

Conversation

How to attend

$19.99

Single Day Pass

$249.99

Full Festival Pass

Students and youth save up to 50% on passes.

From the best-selling author of Room and The Wonder comes a love story for the ages – and at the centre of it all, a woman who truly knew her own heart.

In this unmissable conversation, Emma Donoghue reveals the meticulous research that shaped the book and why Anne Lister has been an ongoing source of inspiration over the years.

Moderated by Judith Pereira.

This event will be followed by a book signing.

Conversation

Featured Authors

Emma Donoghue

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