Emma Donoghue By the Book

Hyping Tuesday's release of her eighth novel (and fifteenth book) Frog Music, today the NYTBR interviews dazzling Emma Donoghue who surprises by saying her favorite living novelist is Neal Stephenson, her all-time favorite is Dickens, and her favorite Irish writer is Roddy Doyle. The interviewer also asks this:

You’ve written several books about lesbian literary history. Are there particular lesbian-themed works you’d recommend to readers?

Oh yes. Here’s one each for the last six centuries, for starters: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrea; Denis Diderot’s The Nun; Henry James’s The Bostonians; Dorothy Strachey Bussy’s Olivia; and Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith.

Whom do you consider your literary heroes?

Those few who somehow find not only the time but the mental and emotional energy to work on changing the world directly, as well as through their writing. I’m thinking especially of those who manage to harness their fame and connections to bring people together around such issues as literacy and social exclusion. Dave Eggers, Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby would be models here, because they’ve all founded brilliant organizations without letting their own fiction become po-faced or propagandist.

Read the full interview here.