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Rob Boffard
| Full Name: |
Rob
Boffard |
| Born: |
Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Occupation: |
author, journalist, sound engineer, hip-hop artist |
| Nationality: |
South African |
| Links: |
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Biography
Rob Boffard also writes under the pen name of Jackson Ford
Rob Boffard was born in Johannesburg in 1984. He grew up reading encyclopaedias for fun (he was that kind of kid). He quickly became obsessed with science fiction, action movies and speaking very loudly to anybody who would listen.
In high school, he added a new obsession to his list: hip-hop. While studying journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa's Eastern Cape province, he was an active rap artist, and became one of the presenters on the longest-running rap radio show in Africa. After graduating in 2007, he moved to the UK with his longtime girlfriend, aiming to blow every spare cent they had on travel.
This endeavour was entirely successful, leaving them both broke but very happy. Rob did numerous jobs in the UK, including being a reader at a media analysis agency, and picking cigarettes up off a pub floor. He edited a London music magazine, got himself fired, and as a result undertook a very successful freelance career. In the past five or six years, he has written for The Guardian, Wired Magazine, Huck Magazine, the BBC, and io9. He has also worked on corporate copy for Google and Microsoft.
Rob continued to rap, and released a full album in 2011, entitled African. By this time, he had a successful second career as a sound engineer. This led to him working closely with a creative agency in London, Maple Street Studios, where he worked on campaigns for companies like EA Games, 20th Century Fox and more.
He began writing Tracer at the end of 2011, after realising that while he was quite happy being a journalist, he enjoyed the writing part most of all. It was the first book he had ever written. Orbit Books bought the rights to the trilogy, and the first novel is due to be released in July 2015.
Some more interesting facts about Rob: He permanently lost his sense of smell after falling out of a tree in Zimbabwe, aged four. He runs a hip-hop podcast. He once spent two months traveling 11,000 miles around the United States. He's a really good cook. In junior school, he wrote to Nelson Mandela, complaining about having to study Afrikaans, and got a reply. He speaks Zulu, and French. He is the last person on the planet who collects CDs
Rob now splits his time between Vancouver, London and Johannesburg. He still loves action movies and science-fiction. He's online at www.robboffard.com and on Twitter at @robboffard.
Author picture: Nicole Simpson
Works in the WWEnd Database
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