Emily Perkins

Emily Justine Perkins (born 1970) is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer, playwright and university lecturer. Over the course of her career Perkins has written five novels, one collection of short stories and two plays. She has won a number of notable literary awards, including twice winning the top award for fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards (in 2009 and 2023). In 2011 she received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award.

Early life, education and family Perkins was born in Christchurch in 1970, and grew up in Auckland and Wellington. She worked as a television actor as a teenager, playing the character Fran in the 1980s New Zealand television series Open House. She graduated from Toi Whakaari with a diploma in acting in 1989, but decided to quit acting a few years later after being unable to find suitable work. She moved to London in the mid-1990s after studying at Victoria, where she married Karl Maughan and had three children.

Career Not Her Real Name to The Forrests: 1996-2012 Perkins' first collection of stories, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories, was published in 1996 by Picador while she was living in London and working in a junior role at Bloomsbury Publishing.

Her first novel Leave Before You Go was published in 1998 by Picador. It was followed by The New Girl (Picador, 2001), which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2006 she received the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship. followed by The Good Word from 2009 to 2012.

Perkins' third novel, Novel About My Wife (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008), won the 2009 Montana Book Award for Fiction and the Believer Book Award. Kirkus Reviews described it as "not perfect, but pungently observed, suspenseful and often funny".

In 2011 Perkins received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award. but failed to reach the longlist. It was shortlisted for the best book of fiction in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2015 she was commissioned by the Auckland Theatre Company to write an adaptation of A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, which was performed at the Maidment Theatre. In 2022 she wrote the original play The Made for the Auckland Theatre Company, performed at the ASB Waterfront Theatre.

She won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction (with $65,000 in prize money) at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her novel Lioness (2023), about the life of a middle-aged woman married to a wealthy property developer. The judges commented: "Disturbing, deep, smart, and funny as hell, Lioness is unforgettable". Lioness was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2025.

Lioness was selected by Steve Braunias as the 2023 Newsroom book of the year, who said it "has the exact feel of New Zealand life as lived by the wealthy, accumulating their total fucking crap and generally having a really good time". Clare Mabey, reviewing for The Spinoff, described it as "masterful in the way it confronts the concept of choice, both big and small".

Publications Perkins, Emily (1997). Not Her Real Name and Other Stories. Picador. . — (1998). Leave Before You Go. Picador. . — (2002). The New Girl. Picador. . — (2008). Novel About My Wife. Bloomsbury Publishing. . — (2012). The Forrests. Bloomsbury Publishing. . — (2023). Lioness. Bloomsbury Publishing. .