Born in New York City. Novelist, writer and director who entered American film when Erich Segal adapted his novel Heir for JENNIFER ON MY MIND (1971). He adapted his own novel for THE BIG FIX (1978). Other notable writing credits (alone or in collaboration) include BUSTIN' LOOSE (1981), MY MAN ADAM (1985, also director), ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY (1989), SCENES FROM A MALL (1991) and PRAGUE DUET (1997, also director). Here's some autobiographical data from his web site: "I have a very typical New York City middle-class background, where my father was a doctor. I went to Dartmouth and then to the Yale School of Drama, wanting to be a playwright. I never learned how to be one though. Playwriting is much harder than any other form of writing I've ever tried, but a novel I had written got published just after I graduated. And that took me to Hollywood. The book got optioned for a movie that was later made. I wasn't connected with its production, but it opened the door for screenwriting to me, and I started writing mystery novels at the same time. "When I wrote The Big Fix it took off overnight. It established my Moses Wine character, and there have been eight of those books over a period of many years, translated into 14 different languages. And the script of THE BIG FIX was my first script that actually got produced. Eventually, director Paul Mazursky and I made two movies together, ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY and SCENES FROM A MALL. "I wrote a couple of other scripts for Paul that never got made, because the movie business was changing: as we got further into '90s, the ability to get serious films made became harder, and now, to get a serious film made within the system is pretty close to impossible. But ENEMIES, is, I think, the thing I'm most proud of as a piece of writing. It's very highly regarded, and I got an Academy Award nomination for it." Simon now writes his own weblog and is the co-founder of Pajamas Media. On co-founding his blog, Simon writes: "One thing we've learned over the last few years is that the mainstream media is far too elitist, and far too top-down. It's not even capable of honestly evaluating truth -- it's lost it; and the only way to counteract that as by a bottom-up revolution. I come back to my Maoist days: let a hundred flowers bloom. The whole citizen journalism revolution convinced Charles Johnson and me that it was time for all of us to take some kind of control over the destiny of our media lives -- and have some fun in the process."  Nominated for Writing - Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium 1989: ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY (w. Paul Mazursky) 1 nomination