Emily Perkins is a short story writer, novelist and creative writing teacher based in Wellington. She has recently ventured into script writing, with her adaptation of Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE having its first run in Auckland in 2015. She is the co-writer, with director Alison Maclean, of THE REHEARSAL, a feature film based on the novel by Eleanor Catton, which screened throughout New Zealand and at international festivals in 2016.
Emily’s fiction is published internationally and her stories have been widely anthologised. Her first book, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories (VUP and Picador, 1996), won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (UK) and the Montana Award for Best First Book of Fiction (NZ). Her four novels include Novel About My Wife which won the Montana Book Award (NZ) and the Believer Book of the Year (US).
Her most recent novel is The Forrests (Bloomsbury, 2012), selected as a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Observer, and New Statesman among other venues, long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 and shortlisted for Best Book of Fiction in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Emily is a graduate of Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand Drama School, and holds a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. She has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Residency and in 2011 was named an Arts Laureate by the Arts Foundation. She teaches creative writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters, where she convenes the MA Fiction workshop.
See Emily Perkins in the following session:
In conversation with Jonathan Raymond: Wildess, Control and Collaboration – Sun 25th September, 10:25 am.
