Rebecca K Reilly - Greta & Valdin

The Marlborough Book Festival

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.

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 at the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival.