THE CREW
EMILY PERKINS
Co-Writer
The Rehearsal is author Emily Perkins’ first screenplay. In another new move, she has also written her first play, an updated Henrik Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ set in contemporary New Zealand.
She left school to act in the TVNZ drama Open House, and then trained at the New Zealand Drama School. In 1993 she studied creative writing in Bill Manhire’s class at Victoria University.
The success of her first collection of stories, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. It was shortlisted for the NZ Book Award and won the Best First Book (Fiction) Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.
She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008, which won the Montana Medal for Fiction at the 2009 Montana NZ Book Awards. Perkins’ novels include Leave Before You Go, The New Girl, which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize,Novel About My Wife, which won the 2009 Montana Book Awards and the Believer Book Award, and The Forrests.
In 1994, she moved to London, then in 2005 she returned to Auckland, where she was employed by both the University of Auckland as a creative writing tutor and AUT University as a lecturer. She also hosted TVNZ’s book programme The Good Word.
Perkins is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011). She now lives in Wellington, where she is a Senior Lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington International Institute of Modern Letters.