Born in England of South African émigré parents, and educated at Columbia University, he also has a degree in French language studies from the Université de Tours and is a classical and Jazz contrabassist. After stints at Harper & Row (1982) and W.W. Norton (1983/4), Simon established Four Walls Eight Windows, and in 1995 he also founded Seven Stories Press. Among the unlikely national bestsellers at Seven Stories have been Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Talents (1998); Alan Dugan's Poems Seven, which won the National Book Award, and Noam Chomsky's 9-11, (2001); and Kurt Vonnegut's A Man without a Country (2005). Equally important, Seven Stories has championed censored books including Gary Webb's Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Conspiracy; All Things Censored by Mumia Abu-Jamal; and My Times: A Memoir of Dissent by John Hess.
Simon's books include a biography, Run Run Run: The Lives of Abbie Hoffman (1994) and, as translator, Van Gogh: Self-Portraits by Pascal Bonafoux (1989). His articles have appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, The Monthly Review, among others. He is a contributor to the four-volume History of the Book in America and the Oxford Companion to the Book. In 1996, Simon was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by order of the French Ministry of Culture.
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