About Olga

Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, was published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus.

A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has published more than 40 short stories in literary journals and anthologies. Her second novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Vampire Menace, was published in 2020.

The third book in the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Weird Sisters, was published in 2022.

The fourth book, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Gondola of Doom, is a 2024 publication.

Olga lives in Edinburgh, where she attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, immortalised in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series. 

She is a past president of the Edinburgh Writers' Club and currently a patron of Bookmark Book Festival. 

She was the inaugural scriever of the Federation of Writers (Scotland).

She also writes the Bunburry series of cosy crime e-novellas under the name Helena Marchmont. These are set in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Bunburry, where self-made multi-millionaire Alfie McAlister and his elderly friends Liz Hopkins and Marge Redwood find themselves investigating murder and mayhem amid the rolling hills.