The Pharma Files: A Newsletter + Podcast
The Pharma Files are case-file stories exploring medical mysteries and the stranger chapters in medicine’s past—where hope, hype, and human judgment collide.
Where Medicine Meets Mystery.
Read and subscribe to the biweekly newsletter at Substack.
The companion podcast expands on each newsletter.
Narrated by fictional investigators Lance Simard and Justine Burke, each episode examines how medical consensus forms, how it changes, and what abandoned or misunderstood therapies still reveal about modern medicine.
Winner of the 2025 Daphne du Maurier Award
My unpublished novel Checkpoint was awarded the 2025 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense (Mainstream Category). Presented by the Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America, this award honors unpublished work in the mystery and suspense genres—with or without romantic subplots.
ITW's 2025 Best First Sentence Contest
Delighted to be a winner of the International Thriller Writers' (ITW) 2025 Best First Sentence Contest at ThrillerFest XX.
Additional Recognition For My Unpublished Novel Checkpoint
Poison Pills: A Short Story
My short story Poison Pills won first place in the Writer’s Digest 94th Annual Writing Competition (short story category). With more than 3,800 entries across all categories, this recognition marks my first piece of fiction to be published.
The story blends my background in science with my love of crime fiction—a reminder of how science and storytelling can collide in surprising ways.
Poison Pills appears in the Nov/Dec 2025 issue of Writer’s Digest and is also available to read online here.
My short story Poison Pills was selected as a finalist in the 2025 PNWA short story contest.
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About
GK Daffu is a British-Canadian biomedical thriller writer. She holds a PhD in Molecular Biology & Genetics and has authored numerous scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals. She spent many years in academia as a Research Scientist before transitioning to medical copywriting. She currently works as a Medical Strategist for a pharmaceutical advertising agency in New York City. She has completed courses such as ITW's 2024 Online Thriller School and ITW's 2025 BizFest (business of publishing), as well as the Novel Writing Intensive with Robert Dugoni and Steven James. She spends her time between Seattle, New York City, and Spain.