Graeme Simsion

Graeme Simsion is a New Zealand-born Australian author of romantic and literary fiction, best known for The Rosie Project (2013), which won the Australian Book Industry’s Book of the Year and has sold over 3.5 million copies.

Simsion is also a screenwriter, playwright, data modeller, and former CEO of a technology consultancy. His latest novel, The Oasis (2025), co-written with Anne Buist, continues their Menzies Mental Health series and follows the bestselling The Glass House.

Graeme C. Simsion was born in Auckland and attended Owairaka Primary School and Wesley Intermediate, where he was dux. At age twelve, he moved with his family to Melbourne. He later reflected on this period in the story Like it Was Yesterday. His teenage years were academically mixed, but he excelled unexpectedly in English. “In a class of scientists, the future writer had the edge,” he noted, recalling his top mark in Quantum Mechanics.

He studied physics at Monash University and worked as a computer operator, programmer, and eventually a consultant. After a stint in the UK with a firm that became Oracle Europe, he returned to Australia and founded Simsion Bowles and Associates. As CEO, he led the company through expansion before selling it in 2002.

Graeme Simsion published his first technical book, Data Modelling Essentials (1993), later co-authored with Graham Witt. In 2006, he completed a PhD in data modelling at the University of Melbourne.

He studied screenwriting at RMIT and adapted one of Anne Buist’s manuscripts into a screenplay. Though never produced, it sparked his interest in storytelling. His screenplay The Rosie Project won the AWG/Inscription Award for Best Romantic Comedy and was shortlisted for the Monte Miller Award.

Following a health crisis in 2010, Simsion paused his career and spent time walking the Camino de Santiago. He later turned The Rosie Project into a novel, which won the 2012 Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and launched his fiction career. The sequels The Rosie Effect (2014) and The Rosie Result (2019) followed.

His other novels include The Best of Adam Sharp (2016) and two collaborations with Buist, Two Steps Forward (2017) and Two Steps Onward (2021). The Oasis (2025), their latest, has attracted interest beyond the page, including a podcast series based on its cases.

Graeme Simsion lives in Melbourne with Anne Buist. He travels frequently, enjoys wine and cocktails, and continues to write fiction informed by data.

Photo credit: graemesimsion.com