About Scott
Scott Simon is one of America’s most admired writers and broadcasters. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.
Simon’s weekly show, Weekend Edition Saturday, has been called by the Washington Post, “the most literate, witty, moving, and just plain interesting news show on any dial,” and by Brett Martin of Time-Out New York “the most eclectic, intelligent two hours of broadcasting on the airwaves.” He has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody, the Emmy, the Columbia-DuPont, the Ohio State Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sidney Hillman Award. Simon received the Presidential End Hunger Award for his coverage of the Ethiopian civil war and famine, and a special citation from the Peabody Awards for his weekly essays, which were cited as “consistently thoughtful, graceful, and challenging.” He has also received the Barry M. Goldwater Award from the Human Rights Fund, the Studs Terkel Award, and the Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award. He will receive the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois in 2016.
Simon is a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning. He has hosted many television series, including PBS’s “State of Mind,” “Voices of Vision,” “Need to Know” and “Backstage With…” “The Paterson Project” won a national Emmy, as did his two-hour special from the Rio earth summit meeting. He co-anchored PBS’s “Millennium 2000″ coverage in concert with the BBC, and has co-hosted the televised Columbia-DuPont Awards. He also became familiar to viewers in Great Britain as host of the continuing BBC series, “Eyewitness.” He has appeared as a guest and commentator on all major networks, including BBC, NBC, CNN, and ESPN.
Simon has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian, and Gourmet among other publications, and won a James Beard Award for his story, “Conflict Cuisine” in Gourmet. He has received numerous honorary degrees.
Sports Illustrated called his book Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan “extraordinary…uniformly superb…a memoir of such breadth and reach that it compares favorably with Fredrick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes.” It was at the top of several non-fiction bestseller lists. His book, and Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was Barnes and Nobles’ Sports Book of the Year. His novel, Pretty Birds, the story of two teenage girls in Sarajevo during the siege, received rave reviews, Scott Turow calling it, “the most auspicious fiction debut by a journalist of note since Tom Wolfe’s. . . always gripping, always tender, and often painfully funny. It is a marvel of technical finesse, close observation, and a perfectly pitched heart.” Windy City, Simon’s second novel, is a political comedy set in the Chicago City Council. Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, an essay about the joys of adoption, was published in August 2010.
Simon’s tweets to his 1.25 million Twitter followers from his mother’s bedside in the summer of 2013 gathered major media attention around the world. They inspired his New York Times bestseller book Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime.
Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, called the book “poignant, funny, intimate, and unforgettable.” Scott Turow called it “a treasure. It is as poignant and tender and wise as Tuesdays with Morrie, with the added virtues of being unflinching and, quite often, very funny.” Laurie Halse Anderson just called the book, “Amazing. Breathtaking. Affirming. This book will change lives, restore hopes to the brokenhearted, and remind the rest of us what is truly important.” Carlos Lozado of the Washington Post called it, in a rave review, “a book that easily matches its title.”
He is also the author of Just Getting Started, with Tony Bennett, My Cubs: A Love Story, and Sunnyside Plaza, his first novel for young adults. His audiobook Swingtime for Hitler, is being adapted into a stage show
Simon is a native of Chicago and the son of comedian Ernie Simon and Patricia Lyons Simon. He is married to Caroline Richard Simon, and their daughters are Elise and Paulina. His hobbies are books, theater, ballet, British comedy, and Mexican cooking and “bleeding for the Chicago Cubs.” He has thrown out the first pitch at Wrigley Field (low and outside) and appeared as Mother Ginger in the Ballet Austin production of The Nutcracker. Scott received the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois in 2016, the state’s highest honor.
He adds, “If you prick me, I’ll bleed Chicago Cubs blue.”
Order of Lincoln
Scott's Remarks on Accepting the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois
Governor Rauner, members of the Lincoln Academy, and my far more distinguished fellow honorees:
Thank you. This is the greatest honor I have received—since my wife and children came into my life.
I hold special thoughts in my heart today for my mother, Patricia Lyons Simon Newman Gelbin, who gave so much joy to those who knew her, and many more who have read about her.
And for my father, Ernie Simon, who was drawn to this state because it is such a lodestar of comedy and entertainment.
And for my stepfather, Ralph Newman, who opened the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop, and did so much to make Abe Lincoln manifest in our lives.
As Mr. Lincoln once said, “Their prayers cling to me.”
My wife, Caroline, and our daughters, Elise and Paulina are here in Peoria. Our daughters carry the cultures of China, where they were born, and France, from their mother, and of course America in their lives. But as they grow up, wherever they land in the world, I hope they will treasure the traits of Illinois that are also their inheritance.
-
Our oldest daughter, Elise, has just turned thirteen. Twelve years and a month ago, we came through Homeland Security at O’ Hare from China. We found ourselves sitting alongside families from Korea, Kenya, El Salvado, Ireland, Poland, and a score of other places, each waiting to enter the United States in the place that is both this country’s most American and international of cities.
The security officer in a broad-brimmed hat called our name: Simon Family. He looked through our paperwork, stamped each sheet, and then pointed to a white line about twenty feet ahead.
“When your little girl crosses that line,” he said, “she’s a citizen of the United States.”
And then he put his huge hand lightly below our daughter’s small chin and told her, “Welcome home, sweetheart.”
To our family, that is the motto and message of Illinois.
To be from Illinois is to carry a stamp through our lives. It is to know that somewhere in our souls we are touched by:
The unbounded openness of the prairie;
The grit and glamour of Chicago;
The emblematic history of Peoria, Springfield, Alton, Collinsville, and Galesburg;
The plainsong poetics of Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bellow, Hemingway, and Aleksander Hemon;
Some of the soaring style of Frank Lloyd Wright, Helmut Jahn, and Michael Jordan.
The dramatics of Nichols and May, The Second City, Steppenwolf, and David Mamet;
And I hope some of the sturdiness of Lincoln, Lovejoy, Grant, Mother Frances Cabrini, Stevenson, Jane Addams, Altgeld, Jesse Jackson, Everett Dirksen, and Barack Obama.I hope you will allow a loving son of Illinois to also offer a note of urgency.
In many ways, this state we cherish has never been more accomplished in art, culture, and commerce. But the violence and murders in neighborhoods of our largest city not only stains the name of Illinois. It is the loss of our lifeblood: of men, women, and children who are part of the wealth of our humanity. And for each life lost, an incalculable number of more lives are crippled with fear and desperation.
The lives being taken from our state every day are those of our sons and daughters. We owe them the full measure of the genius, strength, and determination of this extraordinary state that we so cherish to try to bring peace to their lives.
Thank you.
Q&A
Here are answers to some of the questions I am often asked on book tour.
Q: Why did you decide to leap from journalism into novels?
A: I wanted to challenge myself. And I thought I might have something to offer. I’ve been blessed with a rich reporting career that’s often veered between the imperative, like covering wars, and the inane, like learning how to tango (within the same week, I reported the war in Kosovo, and went swimming in Beverly Hills with Esther Williams). One refreshed my perspective for the other. So I hope I can use my experiences to put details, feeling, and a certain humor into my fiction. And I hope I can apply some old reporting muscles to try to imagine new lives.
Q: Are the characters in your novels based on real people?
A: They’re real characters. Which is to say, they might look like someone I saw riding the tube in London, speak like someone I remember from the sixth grade in Chicago, give voice to some opinions I heard from a guy in Sarajevo—and wind up in a novel set in Germany. But you really know that you’ve entered the world of your novel when you find yourself creating characters that resemble no one you have ever met.
Q: What’s more important: plot or characterization?
A: Both. You need plot because readers crave a reason to turn the page. You need compelling characters that readers will care about through each and every turn.
Q: What’s some of the best advice you ever received about writing?
A: David Halberstam told me to put a sign over wherever I worked saying, “My imagination lives here.” My wife made the sign. But with two small children, I’ve had to write a lot in cafes, and the sign is hard to pack. Now I have a writing office, and a photo of David smiling is the only picture I have up that’s not of or drawn by our daughters. Ridley Pearson told me to write each plot point on an index card and shunt them around to see where they fit. I begin doing that, but lose track after a while. However the cards make splendid coasters. Pete Hamill advises taking naps. Sometimes you can find routes in your sleep that escape you in a state of alertness. At the very least, you get a fresh start, a second morning. But it’s hard to convince my family that when I’m napping, I’m actually fully engaged in the creative process.
Q: What are some of the advantages of writing novels when you have a background in journalism?
A: Discipline, I suppose. You have a sip of coffee and get started. You meet deadlines. More to the point, you learn how to use deadlines to spur whatever creative powers you have. Also, if you’re as lucky as I’ve been, you’ve gotten to meet all kinds of people and seen a little of the world.
Q: Are there drawbacks?
A: You can get so caught up in so many telling details that they just clutter a paragraph. You can get so intent on counting the trees, and describing the leaves, that you don’t see that it’s a forest—or you can miss that bear behind that tree.
Q: What kind of journalism do you admire?
A: Work that challenges the audience, and doesn’t just assure them that everything they think they know is righteous and correct. These days, you almost never have to meet a fact that unsettles you. If you think the landing on the moon never happened, you’ll find a website that tells you you’re right, and passes along enough bogus reporting to support your—forgive the expression, but it’s apt here—lunacy. If you pass it along to enough people, you can support your own sense or reality. Real journalism should shake up your assumptions of reality.
Q: Who are your favorite writers?
A: Greene, Naipaul, Dickens, Tom Wolfe, Le Carre, Wilder, Richler, Ian McEwan, Forster, Scott Turow, and Mark Helprin abound on our shelves. Our daughter also loves the books of Daniel and Jill Pinkwater.
Q: What qualities do they share?
A: They are all deft storytellers. They create true characters. They capture places. They can make me laugh and cry in the same paragraph. I also have favorites in special categories. Rick Bayless writes lyrical cookbooks. Dalton Trumbo wrote magnificent letters. John Grisham always tries to make his novels draw attention to something. Ridley Pearson never runs out of ideas. Alexander McCall Smith has more characters residing in his head than the population of most major metropolitan areas. And I’d read a laundry list if Jan Morris wrote it. I’d also have to include the lyrics of Hank Williams, Frank Loesser, and Stephen Sondheim.
Q: Broadcasting, writing, speaking—do all the different activities intrude on each other?
A: I like to think—have to think, really—that they help. Writing is lonely. Broadcasting is collegial. I enjoy meeting people when I make appearances, and almost always learn something. And as long as you keep learning, who knows where that winds up paying off? The point is to keep moving, keep the blood going, and keep challenging yourself with new things.
Q: What advice would you give young people who want to be journalists, writers, or novelists?
A: Study and do something practical and unrelated to writing or journalism. Study mechanical engineering or archaeology. Work in a fish-gutting factory or a home for mentally retarded adults. Learn what it’s like to work for tips. And read, read, read. I think both writing and journalism suffer from a lack of real world experience and perspective. If you’re young, try something. Try anything. You’ll learn from whatever you do.
1000 Words
A picture is worth a thousand words:
My stepfather Ralph Newman was a merry and remarkable man, a former minor league second baseman who broke his nose on a double play ball and wound up opening the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop in Chicago. He was also president of the Chicago Public Library.
Ralph used to huff about that phrase, A picture is worth a thousand words and ask, “Does anyone really stop to figure out what you could do with a thousand words?”
And, rather in the way that my daughters and I trade, try out, and create stories with each other, my stepfather and I spread out a napkin and came up with this:
“One picture is worth a thousand words? You give me a thousand words and I can give you:
The Lord’s Prayer, the Twenty-third Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the last graphs of Martin Luther King’s speech to the March on Washington, and the final entry of Anne Frank’s diary.