11 Curly Questions with author Richard Roxburgh

Tell us something hardly anyone knows about you.
I can intricately replicate the sound of a distant dog barking.

What is your nickname?
Roxy.

What is your greatest fear?
Anything bad befalling my family.

Describe your writing style in ten words. A free-flowing effervescent casserole of mad-cap adventure and emotional topsy-turvying.

Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer. Insightful. Acute. Towering. Ground-breaking. Profound. ... sorry, did they have to be true?

If you could time travel, what year would you go to and why? Around 1610, London, to have an ale or a glass of sack with Bill Shakespeare at the very summit of his powers.

What would your ten-year-old self say to you now? Hey, mister, well done on writing your new book Artie and the Grime Wave! I’m loving it so far, and hope the denouement lives up to my expectations.

Who is your greatest influence?
Mark Twain, Roald Dahl, Lat (Malaysian cartoonist), Michael Leunig…

What/who made you start writing? Being offered an occasional column in Spectrum magazine in the Sydney Morning Herald. And then reading bedtime stories to my boys.

What is your favourite word and why? Serendipity.

If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be? The Collected Works of William Shakespeare.

Richard's debut children's book, Artie and the Grime Wave, is out now (with Allen and Unwin).
  Richard Roxburgh is an Australian actor who has starred in many Australian films and television series and has appeared in supporting roles in a number of Hollywood productions, usually as villains. He is well-known for his role in the Australian television series, Rake. Artie and the Grime Wave is his first children's book.