Emily Perkins is an award-winning writer living in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Her novels include Lioness, The Forrests, and Novel About My Wife, published by Bloomsbury, and Leave Before You Go and The New Girl, with Picador. Her first book was a collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name.
For the stage, she has adapted Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and written the original play The Made, both developed with Auckland Theatre Company.
Her screenwriting credits include co-writing the feature film adaptation of The Rehearsal and work on TVNZ’s After the Party.
Emily’s writing includes widely anthologised short stories, book reviews, and personal essays. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Guardian, Evening Standard, Sunday Star-Times and the Independent on Sunday, for whom she wrote a long-running column.
Recognition for Emily’s books includes the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the Montana Book of the Year Award (NZ), the Believer Book of the Year (US), and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (UK). The Forrests was longlisted for the Women’s Prize UK. She has held the Buddle Findlay Frank Sargeson Fellowship, and is an Arts Foundation Laureate and member of the Folio Academy. In 2017 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.
Emily is an experienced teacher of creative writing, including at the UK’s Arvon Foundation, University of Auckland, and Victoria University of Wellington, where she convened the MA Fiction workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters for several years. She continues to supervise student work occasionally and has run creative writing sessions with university and college students in India, China, and the UK as well as New Zealand.
Emily hosted TVNZ7’s book programmes The Good Word and The Good Word Junior, and is an experienced festival chair, interviewer, and host of literary events. She is co-editor of The Fuse Box, a collection of essays about the creative process.
