Rebecca K Reilly
Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) is the author of the smart and funny debut novel Greta & Valdin, which has topped the bestsellers list for weeks and won the Hubert Church Prize for best first book of fiction for the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
Rebecca was awarded the Adam Foundation Prize for outstanding MA student at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and named ‘a Person of the Year’ by Viva magazine. Rebecca lives in Auckland.
2022 festival sessions
Greta & Valdin
- in conversation with Tania Miller
Greta & Valdin was a Newsroom novel of the year and the Ockham Award judges described it as “gloriously queer, hilarious and relatable”. Hannah Tunnicliffe writes in her review for Kete: “It's an Auckland barely seen in New Zealand fiction – young, diverse, told from the inside. Racism, sexism and homophobia are all examined here in ways that make you think, sometimes cringe but mostly laugh, due to Reilly’s dry, acerbic tone which manages to also be warm and generous.” Rebecca discusses her extraordinary modern classic with Tania Miller.
Oh So Novel – Rebecca K Reilly, Sue Orr & Kirsten McDougall
Three contemporary New Zealand novelists talk writing. Sue Orr, Kirsten McDougall and Rebecca K Reilly discuss their inspiration, processes and generational insights. They also discuss the place of women - as authors and protagonists - in modern literature.