Lisa O’Donnell

Lisa O'Donnell won the Orange Screenwriting Prize in 2000 for The Wedding Gift and, in the same year, was nominated for the Dennis Potter New Screenwriters Award. Her debut novel, The Death of Bees, was the winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize.

O'Donnell's latest novel is Closed Doors.

From her Q & A at Curtis Brown Creative:

You were a screenwriter for many years. At one point did you decide you wanted to be a novelist?

I was a screenwriter largely working in television. I worked for the BBC and I wrote for Hollyoaks for a while. I enjoyed that experience – storyboarding, working with other people. I didn’t really give up screenwriting, there just weren’t any jobs; so I turned to novel-writing. But even when I wrote my first book and started writing the first lines of the prologue, ‘Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved’, I wasn’t sure whether these words would lead me to write another speculative script or a novel. I decided to write a novel in the end, but I must admit I was a little...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa O'Donnell's website.

Writers Read: Lisa O'Donnell.

The Page 69 Test: Closed Doors.

My Book, The Movie: Closed Doors.

--Marshal Zeringue