Emily Perkins

Who is Emily Perkins?

Emily Perkins is a New Zealand author.

Perkins first won attention in 1996 with her first collection of stories, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories. It was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Award, won the Best First Book Award and subsequently won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

Perkins' novels are Leave Before You Go, The New Girl, Novel About My Wife, and The Forrests. Novel About My Wife won the 2009 Montana Book Awards and the Believer Book Award. The Forrests was tipped by the Hay Festival to win the 2012 Man Booker Prize, but failed to reach the long list.

A longtime resident of London, Perkins lived in Auckland where she was employed by both The University of Auckland as a creative writing tutor and AUT University as a lecturer. She now lives in Wellington, where she is teaching at the internationally renowned Victoria University International Institute of Modern Letters.