Award-winning writer to speak in Mangawhai

10 Apr, 2023

Former GP, Fiona Sussman, hung up her stethoscope in 2003 to pursue another long-held dream, to write.

“It was both exciting and daunting,” she says of the decision, which was borne out of a yearning for a creative outlet and the desire to spend more time with her then young family.

“In some ways I was coming full circle, because I had grown up in a publisher’s home and fallen in love with books at a very early age.”

What was initially going to be just one year out of medicine, became two, then three... then twenty. It was not an easy decision as Fiona was passionate about being a doctor.

She honed her new craft writing short stories.

“The short story form has a limited word count, so every word has to fight for its place on the page.”

A highlight for her was winning the Sunday Star Times Short Story Award.

Fiona returned to university to do a Master of Creative Writing. More than anything the year taught her to take herself seriously as a writer.

The road to publication took ten years and was filled with highs and lows. Finally, in 2014, her first novel, Shifting Colours, was picked up by a London publisher.

“It was an indescribable moment seeing my book in bookstores,” she says.

The following year, rights were sold to a New-York-based publisher and the book was released in the USA under the title, Another Woman’s Daughter.

Since starting out, Fiona has written four novels and numerous short stories. Her writing has won a number of awards, including the Ngaio Marsh Best Crime Novel Award, and the Booklovers Award for Best Adult Fiction. She was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Her most recent novel, The Doctor’s Wife, is a domestic thriller that sees a longstanding, supposedly tight friendship between four friends shattered by illness and an unexplained violent death. It was named one of the 100 Best Books of 2022 by the NZ Listener.

In addition to writing, Fiona mentors other writers, takes creative writing workshops, and give talks to various groups and organisations. She also assists in the management of a charitable surgical service – Aotearoa Charity Hospital – she and her surgeon husband started ten years ago, with the aim of assisting those who’d fallen between the cracks in our health system.

Fiona and her family have been coming to Mangawhai for the past twenty years and hope to move up in the not-too-distant future, when her husband retires. “The great thing about writing as a career is it’s so transportable and there’s no age-limit,” she says.

Fiona will be sharing more about her writing life, and her most recent novel, in the inaugural Meet the Author event on April 28 at 6pm, hosted by Mangawhai Writers Workshop at the Old Church, Mangawhai Historic Village, 191 Molesworth Drive.

Books will also be on sale on the night, which Fiona will be delighted to personalise.

Fiona Sussman gave up her career as a GP to write, a decision that was both ‘exciting and daunting’. PHOTO/SUPPLIED