Emily Duncan first came to notice as an awarded young playwright in Playmarket's New Zealand Young playwrights Competition with the terrific one-act play Lips in 1999, which marked her early as a playwright to watch. Sweet Meats followed, inspired by the slave poetry of the Romantic period, and was produced at the Dunedin fringe in 2004. Duncan's full-length drama Palliative Care premiered in 2008 during the Otago Festival of the Arts to excellent reviews and audiences. The play had previously seen Duncan provided by Playmarket with dramaturgy with British playwright Simon Stephens in 2006. Duncan's next play Water Baby received a reading as part of Write out Loud Dunedin at the Fortune in 2007 and a public reading at the Court Theatre in 2008.

Dunedin-based, Duncan is an English and Drama teacher at Otago Boys' High School.