Graeme Simsion, author of best-selling debut novel The Rosie Project, recently joined Stylist' for a lunchtime masterclass.

Graeme worked as an IT consultant and educator in his native Australia for 20 years before completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne.

He then enrolled on a screenwriting course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and wrote and produced a dozen short films, most of which were screened at festivals or sold to television.

The Rosie Project was originally written as a screenplay, and won the Australian Writers Guild/Inception Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010. In 2011, Graeme adapted the story into a novel and it won the Victorian Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript.

The story revolves around protagonist Don Tillman, a genetics professor who might just be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Don decides it’s time to find a wife and comes up with a foolproof plan to find the ‘perfect specimen’ in the form of a survey, but when Rosie shows up at his office he can’t think of anybody more unsuitable. She smokes, she drinks, she is a waitress – and she wants his help in genetics expertise to find her father.

The Rosie Project has already sold rights in more than 30 countries worldwide, with critics hailing the debut as touching and laugh-out-loud funny - a screwball comedy that lands somewhere between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and The Silver Linings Playbook. Fellow authors have lined up to endorse the read, with Marian Keyes describing it as "really funny and heart-warming, a gem of a book."

The Rosie Project is published by Michael Joseph and out on 11 April 2013, £12.99

Your questions for Graeme and his responses are still visible below...

Web chat: Graeme Simsion