About Lewis M. Simons:
Pulitzer Prize winner Lewis M. Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. He saw the war through to the end, covering the fall in quick succession of the former Indochinese states.
Since then, Simons has reported on war, civil unrest, politics and economics throughout Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh; Iraq and Iran; China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea, as well as the former Soviet Union. He was a staff correspondent for The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Knight-Ridder Newspapers and Time.
Simons and two colleagues won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1986, for exposing the billions that the Marcos family looted from the Philippines. He was twice a Pulitzer finalist and has received numerous other journalism awards, including the George Polk and the University of Missouri’s Investigative Reporters and Editors. He was the Edward R. Murrow Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Simons’ op-ed and analytical articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic and Smithsonian magazines. He has contributed extensively to National Geographic and his work also has appeared in USA Today, where he is a member of the Board of Contributors, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Daily Kos and Yaleglobal.com. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, BBC and CBC.
He is the author of Worth Dying For, co-author with Senator Christopher S. Bond of The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam and a contributing author of half a dozen books on war and international affairs.
A graduate of New York University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Simons was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve. He held the 2012-2013 Snedden Chair in Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is married to fellow journalist Carol Simons. They have three grown children and reside in Washington, DC.
What inspires you to write?
For me, writing is air, food and drink. I cannot imagine living without it. I have written something for publication practically every day of my adult life—wire-service reports, newspaper and magazine articles, three books and contributions to half a dozen other books.
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
Mark Twain
Ernest Hemingway
Winston Churchill
Theodore White
Jill Lepore
Marguerite Young
Tell us about your writing process.
I report, research, study and absorb until whatever I'm tracking takes up nearly all my thought processes. Then, I take up a pen or pencil, sit at a typewriter or computer and write and rewrite an opening sentence, one I consider the key to what will follow. From then on, I let the writing lead me to the end. Then I do it all over. And again. And again…
What advice would you give other writers?
1. Apply buttocks to chair.
2. Keep it there until you have written something that satisfies you.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
My new book, TO TELL THE TRUTH: My Life As A Foreign Correspondent, is my third. All three have been published by traditional houses. That's the generation I come from and I saw no reason to change now.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I believe it will be entirely electronic by the time my grandchildren are grandparents.
What genres do you write?: Nonfiction
What formats are your books in?: Print
Website(s)
Lewis M. Simons Home Page Link
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
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