About

Emily Duncan is an award-winning writer, dramaturg, and director based in Ōtepoti-Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand.

She won the 2020 Bruce Mason Award, the 2021 Adam NZ Play Award, as well as the Best Play by a Woman Playwright, and the McNaughton South Island Play Award categories for & Sons, and the 2022 McNaughton South Island Play Award for her adaptation of Katherine Mansfield’s The Woman at the Store.

Emily holds a PhD in Theatre from the University of Otago and was the university’s 2019 Robert Burns Fellow. She received both the Friends of the Hocken Collections Award 2023 and the Whakahoa Kaitoi Te Puna Toi Arts For All Fellowship in 2023.

In addition to playwriting and dramaturgy, she trained as an actor at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute (NYC) and has written, directed, and co-hosted podcasts.