Greta and Valdin

Newsroom named Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) the best book of 2021.

The 2022 Ockham Book Award judges described it as “gloriously queer, hilarious and relatable”.It won Best First Book and was nominated for the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Rebecca creates messy, self-sabotaging characters who are relatable because of their flaws, not despite them. Drawn to outsiders and weirdos, Rebecca is a surprising and deeply funny writer who perfectly captures the chaos of family and unrequited love. She’ll kōrero with former Tauranga local and Verb Wellington director Claire Mabey about how she crafted this unique novel, where she draws her inspiration from, and who her idols are.

Sponsored by Books A Plenty

Accessibility: Wheelchair friendly event

Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Rehua ki Ngātiwai) is a novelist from Waitākere. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in German and European Studies from the University of Auckland and a Master of Arts from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing in 2019. In 2022 she won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction for her first book, Greta & Valdin.

Claire Mabey, with her partner Andrew Laking, is director of Pirate and Queen, the production house behind Verb Wellington, LitCrawl and Lōemis. She is also a writer, book critic and curator of the writers’ programme at the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts.