William Brandt was born in 1961 and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. He has lived in Sydney, Moscow, London and Noumea, and is currently living in Mexico City.
He has worked as a film and television actor, script writer, playwright, and producer.
Brandt has written a number of novels, and his first collection of short stories, Alpha Male, won the Best First Book of Fiction award at the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.His fiction has been published in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom and The United States, and has been translated into Italian and French.
Brandt was also shortlisted in 2006 for the prestigious Prize in Modern Letters. His writing is characterized by its humour, and its mix of realism and occasions of surreal undertow. The Times Literary Supplement described his short fiction as “Carver-esque”, and his novel The Book of the Film of Story of My Life was named by the New Zealand Herald as one of the ten best NZ books of the decade. He is married, has three children, but no dog.