Emily Perkins was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. She grew up in Auckland and Wellington and studied acting at the New Zealand Drama School / Te Kura Toi Whakaari and writing at Victoria University and worked as a TV actor. Perkins won attention when Picador (UK) published her first collection of stories, Not Her Real Name (1996), while she was living in London. It was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Award, won the Best First Book (Fiction) Award and subsequently won the Faber Award in the UK. Perkins' other novels are Leave Before You Go (1998) and The New Girl (2001), which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2006 she was the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow. She used the fellowship to work on, Novel About My Wife (2008), a taut, sensuous and chilling portrait of a marriage beset by paranoia and obsession. For Novel About My Wife, Perkins won the Believer Book of the Year Award (US) and the Montant NZ Book Award.