Born October 24: Emma Donoghue, B.D. Wong

Emma Donoghue, 42 today, is so much more than the author of Room [[Kindle]], her runaway bestseller that last year was shortlisted for the Booker, the Orange Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Galaxy International prize, and won the Rogers Writers' Trust prize. Four months before Room, Knopf published her essential and immensely entertaining, decade-in-the-making exploration of lesbians in literature, Inseparable [[Kindle]]. In six previous novels she proved herself equally at home in the present (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing) and the past (Slammerkin, Life Mask, The Sealed Letter). She has also written three collections of stories, four plays, and five radio plays. Ordinarily she lives with her partner Chris and their children, Una and Finn, in Ontario but this year they're in Nice. Don't envision her lollygagging on the beach. She's completing the screenplay of Room, a book of short stories about travel called Astray (pubbing September 2012), and a historical novel about an 1870s frog catcher named Jeanne Bonnet who was frequently arrested in San Francisco for wearing men's clothes and was murdered at 27.

A fourth generation Chinese-American, B.D. Wong made his Broadway debut in 1988 in M. Butterfly, for which he became and remains the only actor to win the five major theater prizes for the same role. But it was not enough to convince David Cronenberg to cast him in the movie version five years later, when he chose John Lone instead. Wong starred with Margaret Cho in her much praised, quickly canceled series All American Girl, then played a priest on Oz, and for ten years running Dr George Huang on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He and his ex-partner Richie Jackson, an agent, are parents of a son named Foo, the surviving one of two twins born extremely prematurely. Wong wrote a book about the experience called Following Foo.

Comments

[Arthur Durkee]

I just wanted to mention that I think B.D. Wong is a terrific actor. He really shined in the revival of Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures," too.

[Angeles City Pages]

How did you get to be this good? Its amazing to see someone put so much passion into a subject. Im glad I came across this. Im glad I took the time to read on past the first paragraph. Youve got so much to say, so much to offer. I hope people realise this and look into your page.