The Woman Who Laughed

Simon Mason is a writer of fiction. At first he wrote books for adults, then books for children, which grew up at roughly the same rate his own children grew up, and now he is back writing books for adults again. In 1990, The Great English Nude won the Betty Trask prize for best first novel. In 2002, The Quigleys, for seven-to-nine-year-olds, received a special commendation in the Branford Boase prize for best first children’s novel. Moon Pie (2011), for eight-to-twelve-year-olds, was shortlisted for The Guardian Children’s Fiction prize. More recently he has written three crime novels for young adults featuring the sixteen-year-old slacker genius Garvie Smith. Running Girl (2014) was shortlisted for the Costa prize for best children’s book, Kid Got Shot (2016) won the Crimefest prize for best YA crime novel, for which Hey, Sherlock! (2018) was also shortlisted. In addition to his fiction he has also written a work of nonfiction, The Rough Guide to Classic Novels(2007), for which he chose, read and wrote pieces on 200 classic novels from all world traditions, from the time of Don Quixote to the present day. He has pursued a parallel career as a publisher. From 2012 to 2018 he was Managing Director of David Fickling Books, where he worked with many wonderful writers, including Philip Pullman, whose book of essays, Daemon Voices(2016), he edited. Born in Sheffield, where his father was captain of Sheffield United, he has lived in Oxford now for thirty-five years.