Born in Dublin in 1969, I am an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and playright, living in Canada with my family.
Set in Dublin during the Great Flu pandemic in 1918 (and written before COVID-19), my novel The Pull of the Stars (2020) is about a nurse midwife, a doctor and a volunteer helper living through three days in a maternity quarantine ward.
Akin (2019) is my first contemporary novel for adults since Room. It follows a retired chemistry professor and his eleven-year-old great-nephew from New York on their journey to the French Riviera to unearth his mother's wartime secrets.
The Wonder (2016, a finalist for Canada's Giller Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year), is about a 'fasting girl' in nineteenth-century Ireland and the English nurse sent to watch her. I adapted it into a feature film with director Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch, starring Florence Pugh, produced by Element Pictures (who made Room) and House Productions and coming from Netflix in 2022.
My novel Room (2010) was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes and has sold over two million copies. I adapted it into my first feature film, Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, which was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actress (won by our lead, Brie Larson).
My other books are the historical novels Frog Music, The Sealed Letter, Life Mask, Slammerkin, and contemporary ones Landing, Hood and Stir-fry; two family stories for younger readers illustrated by Caroline Hadilaksono, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More Or Less; short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook), Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and Kissing the Witch.
I have also published literary history including Inseparable, We Are Michael Field, and Passions Between Women, as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
