Cultural Curator

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Publications & Writing

I write fiction about power and the people caught inside it. My debut novel, The Breakdown Clause, is satirical political fiction set deep in New Zealand's parliamentary machine — drawn from the years I spent advising government ministers, close enough to power to see exactly how decisions get made, and how the power dynamics at play impact those within the structure. Penguin Random House New Zealand publishes it in February 2027. A second novel, Ripe, is underway: a Brooklyn-set story about motherhood, desire, and the quiet contract of marriage, the short version of which was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. My short fiction has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and published in journals here and overseas.

The writing doesn't only happen at my desk in Wellington. I am fortunate to have been chosen for international residencies — a studio at Ketemu in Bali in 2026, and at Argo Arts in Athens late 2026 — because being somewhere strange provides the inspiration and space to focus on my own creativity - something that is difficult at home where I am enabling others.

I'm based at the bottom of the world and am aware of the need to fly the New Zealand flag, and the Folly flag, when I have the opportunity to travel. New Zealand writers deserve a larger audience than just our little island.

Within my publishing and writing world, you can reach me over at Folly Journal.

Publications & Place

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    The Wellington Writers' Studio

    A members-only work space set in a heritage building in central Wellington. Emily founded this beautiful, accessible space in 2022 after seeing similar studio’s in New York. The Studio is a social enterprise: a professional home where novelists, poets, journalists and screenwriters work alongside each other, run into each other, and build the kind of community that careers actually grow out of.

    The thriving community at the WWS hosts events, talks, launches and its own annual zine.

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    Folly Journal & Press

    What began as a literary experiment in 2023, became a bestselling cult object for readers around the world. Emily launched Folly to transform the way publishing operates, through a social enterprise model that publishes collections of voices, stories and provocations alongside human art. This is writing sharp and sexy enough to have one issue pulled from shelves of a nationwide chain store on launch day - it is writing built for performance.

    In 2026 Folly is expanding into Folly Press — an independent publishing house with its own imprints, built to put more new voices into the world than a single journal ever could.

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Building the rooms — and the pages — where new writing gets made and found.

Curating culture is its own kind of authorship. I've spent the last few years building two things that do it — a publication and a place — because talent is everywhere in this country and the infrastructure to back it is not.

It has worked. Folly has won silver at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards silver medal (US, 2025) and the Chill Subs Literary Incubator (2025), and placed as a Firecracker Award runner-up. When Whitcoulls pulled the journal from 47 stores for "offensive content," the issue spent four consecutive weeks on the indie bestseller list and sold out.