Simon Parkin

Simon Parkin is a British author and journalist for magazines, newspapers and websites. He is contributing writer for the New Yorker, a regular contributor to the Guardian's Long Read, a critic for The Observer newspaper, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS).

During the past decade he has contributed to The New York Times, Harper's, the Guardian, New Statesmen, BBC and a variety of other publications

His work has been featured in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He is a finalist in the Foreign Press Association Media Awards and recipient of two awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Parkin is the author of several books, including Death by Video Game, a New York Times Book Review Recommended Read, and A Game of Birds and Wolves, a work of narrative non-fiction set during the Second World War which was described by the New Yorker as "vivid and engaging."

Parkin’s third book, The Island of Extraordinary Captives, is about Hutchinson Camp an internment prison established on the Isle of Man in July 1940. It was described by Sir Max Hastings in The Sunday Times as "a powerful book, vivid and moving" and won the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize.

His next book, The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad, is about the scientists who protected the world’s largest seed bank during the deadly siege of St Petersburg.

Parkin lives in West Sussex, England.