Margaret Simons was born in England in 1960. She moved with her parents and sister to Adelaide, South Australia, when she was eight years old and was raised in the outer suburb of Rostrevor. Following in her father’s footsteps Simons became a keen glider pilot in her teens and spent many holidays and weekends flying at the Waikerie Gliding Club in the South Australian Riverland. The River Murray country has been a significant influence on her work.
Simons was educated at Campbelltown High School and the University of Adelaide. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1980.
Her first jobs in journalism were during university holidays. She worked for Australian Gliding magazine reporting on national gliding competitions and for the River News newspaper at Waikerie. In 1981, having completed her degree, she gained a cadetship at The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
Simons spent nearly ten years on staff at The Age. She worked as an arts reporter, feature writer, consumer affairs roundsperson, as a specialist in Freedom of Information legislation and as an investigative journalist. From 1986 to 1989 she was the newspaper’s Brisbane correspondent during the years of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police and political corruption. At the conclusion of the inquiry’s public hearings, she took leave from The Age to join Mr Tony Fitzgerald QC’s staff to assist in the writing of his final report.
On her return to Melbourne and The Age, Simons did investigative work on the Victoria police. This led to her being commended in the Walkley Awards in 1990.
Simons left The Age in 1991 to move back to Waikerie and write her first novel, The Ruthless Garden, which in 1993 won the inaugural Angus and Robertson Bookworld prize. Simons had by then returned to Melbourne and was working as a feature writer for The Australian. She left that job in 1994 to move to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales and work on her second novel, The Truth Teller, which was published in 1996.
Simons lived in the remoter reaches of the Blue Mountains for ten years. She became involved in Varuna – the Writers House at Katoomba, which is now one of Australia’s leading literary institutions. She served as secretary and then chair of the board from 1994 to 1998.
She also wrote the popular EarthMother gardening column, which was published first in The Australian and later in Sunday Life magazine (circulated with The Sunday Age in Victoria and The Sunday Sun-Herald in New South Wales). A compilation of her columns was published by New Holland Press under the title Wheelbarrows, Chooks and Children in 1999.
Her book on the Canberra Press Gallery Fit to Print was also published in 1999 and was shortlisted in the New South Wales Premier’s awards that year. Her major work, The Meeting of the Waters, an examination of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, was researched and written between 1998 and 2002, and published in 2003. It won the Queensland Premier’s literary award for best non-fiction book, and was shortlisted for three other literary prizes. Her book on the history of compost, Resurrection in a Bucket was published in 2004.
While writing her books Simons has continued to work as a freelance journalist. At various times she has been on retainer to The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the short-lived Eye magazine.She is presently on retainer to the internet based news service Crikey as media commentator.
Simons also works as a mentor and trainer of journalists and emerging writers of both fiction and non-fiction. She has taught journalism at Charles Sturt University, the University of Western Sydney, the University of South Australia and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Since 1992, she has been the main provider of editorial training to News Limited suburban newspapers in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, and she provides training services to a number of other media organisations.
In 2003, Simons returned to Melbourne, where she now lives in the inner suburbs with her husband and two children. In 2004 her essay on the then leader of the Opposition, Mark Latham, was published by Australian Quarterly Essay. In 2005 she was awarded a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney, and later that year was appointed a senior associate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University.
Simons’ latest books include The Content Makers - Understanding the Future of the Australian Media, published by Penguin in September 2007, and Faith, Money and Power - What the Religious Revival Means for Politics, published by Pluto , also in September 2007. Simons is a finalist in the 2007 Walkley Awards for journalism (magazine feature writing category) for her essay Buried in the Labyrinth, published by Griffith Review.
Simons’ current projects include a book on the subject of class for Melbourne University Press, and working with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser on his memoirs. She is associated with the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, researching new media and its application to journalism.
