2025 Event: Emma Donoghue - Sold Out!
In conversation with Senator Paula Simons

Wednesday, October 15 | 7 PM

Forsyth Hall, Downtown Library | $10

The Paris Express:

From Emma Donoghue, author of Room, The Wonder and Pull of the Stars comes a taut and suspenseful historical novel that reimagines an 1895 French railway disaster, an event famously documented in dramatic photographs.

“A tension-filled panorama of fin-de-siècle French society.” — New York Times
 

About Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. Her novel Room has sold almost three million copies, 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 of the Netflix film which starred Florence Pugh. 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.

The Paris Express

The Paris ExpressSet over a single day, as the morning train travels from the Normandy coast to Paris, men, women and children take their seats in the passenger cars, which are divided by wealth and status. Among the passengers is an anarchist intent on destruction, a young boy travelling alone, a pregnant woman fleeing her home village for the anonymity of the big city, a medical student who suspects a girl may have a fatal disease, and the railway men, devoted to the train, to the company and to each other.

Senator Paula SimonsThe Honourable Paula Simons is an Independent Senator from Alberta. She joined the Senate in 2018, after a 30 year career as an investigative reporter and political columnist. She has also been — from time to time — a documentary producer, a playwright, and a writer of popular history.