Vanda Symon

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Vanda Symon

Vanda Symon lives in that little Utopia at the bottom of the world called New Zealand. She inherited outrageous hair from her Fijian father and a over-fondness for tea and pun-battles from her Kiwi mother. Her superpower is being the person who goes around at buffets and pot luck dinners and eats the last remaining item left on the plate that everyone else is too polite to take.

Her greatest weakness is an inability to say no. But this has lead to an incredibly rich and happy life doing everything from hosting a radio show and interviewing famous people at writers’ festivals, to washing the gross sweaty fencing jackets for the sports club over the school holidays.

Vanda has a PhD from the University of Otago on the communication of science through crime. She has an undergraduate degree in Pharmacy and worked as a community pharmacist and palliative care pharmacist before concentrating on her writing career. She now works at Va’a o Tautai – the Centre for Pacific Health at the University of Otago – as a research fellow looking at dementia in aged Pacific people.

Vanda is the author of the Detective Sam Shephard series and of the standalone psychological thriller The Faceless.

When Vanda isn’t doing her day job, or imagining inventive ways to kill people, she can be found pottering in the garden or on the business end of a sword.

Interviewed 21 January 2024

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

From fish and chips cook, to researcher, and everything in between.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

My tea tray, the snoring cat, an out-of-control monstera plant, my overgrown garden, an excessive to-do list, a Leonardo da Vinci helicopter model, today’s fountain pens, 28 bottles of ink, a can of fly spray.

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Cheese and relish toasted sandwich – that’s a meal, right?

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

Ngaio Marsh, Stephen King, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Monty Don, Susie Dent, Dolly Parton, Sam Neill. (Ngaio could be difficult to arrange).

Six things you can't live without ...

Tea, cheese, potato crisps, slippers, word puzzles, books.

Five favourite words ...

I’ll put the kettle on

Four places you'd run away to ...

A beach bach on New Zealand’s West Coast in winter (hopefully less sandflies then), the Scottish Highlands in autumn, Japan in the spring and my publisher’s house in London any time of year.

Three books you've bought recently ...

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Incredible Journeys: Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation by David Barrie
Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Two things that make you rant ...

Don’t get me started, but delivery people who leave parcels at the front door in the rain when there is a covered porch area one metre away, and avocados that turn to the dark side before you get a chance to eat them.

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

You know that crazy hair you can’t control right now – you’re going to love it when you’re older.