Amy McDaid

Amy McDaid is a New Zealand novelist and neonatal intensive-care nurse whose fiction brings medical knowledge into stories about grief, perception, and urban life. Fake Baby, her 2020 debut from Penguin New Zealand, follows three people across nine days in Auckland: Stephen, who believes his father threatens the world; Jaanvi, who takes a lifelike doll while mourning her child; and pharmacist Lucas, whose workplace mistake deepens a personal crisis. Their separate paths gradually intersect through minor characters and shared emotional pressures. McDaid earned a creative-writing master’s at Auckland University, where the manuscript won the Sir James Wallace Prize in 2017. The published novel was later longlisted for the fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and shortlisted for the best first-book award. Her clinical profession gives particular weight to the novel’s attention to loss and care without turning it into a medical case study. Fake Baby combines dark humour, compassion, and an Auckland setting in a carefully structured debut.