An Online Interview with Emma Donoghue took place on April 23rd, 2002. Emma was somewhere in France. The interview was conducted using the then popular chat software, and the public were invited to participate in the interview.
Virtual Writer
First of all I’d like to welcome Emma Donoghue and thank her for agreeing to chat to us.
Emma
Thanks Paul, and thanks VirtualWriter for having me for my very first online interview experience.
Virtual Writer
I’d like to ask the first question: Your new book has a fabulous title, ‘The Woman who Gave Birth to Rabbits. Can you tell us how you came to find the title?
Emma
My editor at Virago has a very good nose for titles, or maybe I should say ear. She thought the most attention-grabbing story in the whole book (which is made up of short fictions based on historical incidents) was the one about an Englishwoman who in the 1720s managed to hoax half the country into believing that she had given birth to 18 (dead) rabbits.
Virtual Writer
You wrote the book over ten years, I imagine a great deal of research went into the stories which are based on historical facts?
Emma
Ludicrous amounts, if I were assessing whether the work was worth it on a euro-per-hour basis! But there’s nothing I like better than a day immersed in a library.
Virtual Writer
Many of the stories seem fantastic, unlikely even: the female brewer, the shortest girl in the world, a crippled lady saving sailors? Was part of the appeal the other-worldiness of the actual events!?
Emma
Obviously I was drawn to things that would sound strange to contemporary readers, but they were often pretty normal in their day; for instance, brewing was seen as a woman’s job in the Middle Ages, and freak-shows in which people were exhibited for their tinyness or hugeness were one of the standard forms of entertainment in the nineteenth century.
Virtual Writer
Did any of them appeal to you enough to turn into a novel?
Emma
Funny you should ask: while this book was in the making, as it were, two of the story ideas turned into other things; I based my first radio play (for RTE, back in 1996) on a seventeenth-century Cork witchtrial, and called it TRESPASSES, and my last novel, SLAMMERKIN, was meant to be just a very short story too.
Virtual Writer
Fine, some questions from some other people …
Brian
I was recently reading an article by Gore Vidal on the Italian writer Calvino. He mentions that in the 1950’s people talked about books with the same excitement that people talk about films today? Would a comment like that bother you as a writer?
Emma
When I let myself think about it, yes! Nowadays, writing is certainly not the cultural form that stirs up the greatest number of people. Also, there are so many of us around, writers, I mean; in the 1950s there wasn’t quite such a bewildering cacaphony of voices, all trying to be heard… But none of these things makes me too gloomy, because I fundamentally enjoy the work, no matter who’s going to read it in the end.
Siobhan
Is there any reason why your book ‘Kissing the Witch’ which retells fairy tales was sold as an adult book in the UK and a young adults book in the US? Did you know it is being sold together with Buffy The Vampire Slayer as a kind of combo by Amazon?
Emma
No! That’s hilarious. Having become a bit of a Buffy fan this summer, I’m honoured. As for the publishing decision, that was one of those like-it-or-lump-it situations. My adult press in the US at the time, HarperCollins, didn’t want ‘Kissing the Witch’, but their young-adult branch did, so I very reluctantly agreed. The surprise was that, by targeting an audience, they sold the book in much bigger numbers than my first two, and in a way they got me a whole new market. I’ve written more stories specifically for the young adult market since, and I realise I shouldn’t have been so snobby about it in the first place. But to answer your question, I do think of KTW as a book primarily for adults, and it’s one of those quirks of the publishing world that in the US, all fairy-tale material is seen as somehow for the young.
Brian
Many fine books have been turned into lesser films. There’s a debate on at the moment about the quality of Lasse Hallstrom adaptation of Annie Proulx’s Shiping News. She was very happy it. Do you look forward to seeing your characters on the big screen or would that make you apprehensive?
I’m thinking here of Stirfry , your first novel, which I know you wrote the screenplay for!
Emma
Apprehensive, but excited. I’ve learned what they all say is true: it rarely happens that your book gets filmed. Stirfy was in development for many years with an Irish company and I wrote many drafts of the script; it’s a very weird process, reworking your ideas over and over in the hopes of attracting the right funding. I’m not sure it’s something I’d like to do again. With Slammerkin, there is interest in filming it, but I don’t want to do the script. I’m keen on writing original scripts, but doing the necessary butcher-job on my own novel is a more painful business!
Virtual Writer
You have written drama, fiction, lit.crit, and just about everything else. You’ve also edited a book of poetry! Is poetry the only thing you don’t write?
Emma
Oh I did, I did. I have several hand-written volumes of it in my mother’s attic, covering ages 7 to 20. My poems were all rather tense, but writing them was excellent practice for how to pick the word you want. When I got the idea for my first novel, Stirfry (at college, when I was 19) I all at once, and with a real feeling of relief, moved from poetry into fiction. Or rather, into telling stories, which covers fiction and drama too.
Siobhan
As a writer do you have any eccentric habits while writing? I’m thinking of Hemingway who stood while writing and Proust wrote from his bed?
Emma
Well, since you’ve raised the body-position theme, I’ve realised recently that it’s pointless my having a desk and an ergonomic typing-chair, because I use the desk to pile up papers on and the chair to sling my clothes over. What I actually like to sit on is a sofa, so I think I’ll throw out the desk replace it with a comfortable couch and a coffee table.
Wayne
Emma, Hi, a pleasure to meet you, I’m Wayne. You’ve just described my desk and chair !
Emma
Oh, I forgot one. I also rub my lower lip with the index finger of my right hand.
The funny thing is, Wayne, that if I’m writing something (pseudo) scholarly, I can temporarily work at the desk, but as soon as it’s creative stuff, I need to sink back into some cushions!…
Virtual Writer
You have a PhD. ? Have you ever taught or would you like to teach?
Emma
No, I’d only like to teach at a university if I couldn’t pay the mortgate by writing, and it was that or go back to chambermaiding (a job I was sacked from many years ago.)
Wayne
Emma… Who are your favourite writers? What are you reading at the moment?
Emma
I just finished Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal, a brilliant novel about arctic exploration in the 1850s. Other recent excitements, let’s see: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, oh and Dante’s Inferno (I never got around to that one till now). I read a real mix. Some of my must-buy-it-if-it’s-by-him/her writers would be Jane Smiley, Terry Pratchett, Anne Tyler…
Emma
Whoops, maybe I should I included an Irish one. I’ve read everything by Roddy Doyle.
Siobhan
Is there any particular book you think everyone should read?
Emma
No, in fact I think it’s a slightly sinister idea. I like browsing in people’s bookshelves, and the odder the mix, the more I like them…
Wayne
Emma, I’ve started to go encounter an irritable dull seizure that I’ve affectionately called, My Two Month Writing Block, Every Second Month . . . . . What do you find helps you when inspiration is lacking and motivation even more so?
Emma
If I’m stuck I go to a library and research something. It gets me out of the tortured egotistical quandary of how–can-I-express-my-inner-being, and focuses me again on the fact that there’s a world of stories out there that need telling. (Researching is also easier than writing, to be honest, especially if the library has a cafe.)
Virtual Writer
Okay Emma, I promised not to keep too much longer, so last question: ColmToibin slated the film ‘Iris’ recently? Did you see it? And did you think like him think it betrayed her work?
Emma
Sorry, I haven’t seen it yet. I’m currently in a tiny town in the south of France for a few months, and the only films I’ve seen have been badly dubbed and lowbrow. But I’m sure Colm’s right. He’s one of the brightest thinkers I know.
Virtual Writer
Ok Emma, I’d like to say a big thanks on behalf of everyone.
Emma
Thanks all, have a nice evening.
