The Forrests

Emily Perkins is a New Zealand novelist who has started to write for theatre with her adaptation of A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Perkins started her theatre career as an acting student in Toi Whakaari's stellar Class of 1987. Her first collection of stories Not Her Real Name, published when she was 26, was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in the UK and the Montana First Book of Fiction Award in NZ. Picador published her first novel, Leave Before You Go. The New Girl, her second novel, was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK.

She was the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow in 2006 and during the Fellowship finished her fourth book, Novel About My Wife which was awarded the Believer Book Award in the US and the Medal for Fiction at the Montana NZ Book Awards. Her most recent novel, The Forrests, published by Bloomsbury in 2012, was long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 and a finalist in the NZ Post Book Awards. In 2011 she was made an Arts Laureate by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.

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