About J.David Simons
J. David Simons was born in Glasgow in 1953. He studied law at Glasgow University and became a partner at an Edinburgh law firm before giving up his practice in 1978 to live on a kibbutz in Israel. Since then he has lived in Australia, Japan and England working at various stages along the way as a charity administrator, cotton farmer, language teacher, university lecturer and journalist. He returned to Glasgow in 2006 where he currently lives with his partner Sofia.
His first novel, The Credit Draper was published in May 2008 by Two Ravens Press and was short-listed for The McKitterick Prize in June 2009. In September 2009, he received a Writer’s Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) to assist in the completion of a second novel, The Liberation of Celia Kahn, which was published – along with a re-print of The Credit Draper - by Five Leaves Publishing in February 2011.
In April 2011, he was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, allowing him to spend one month in France at an artists' retreat - the Hotel Chevillon in Grez-sur-Loing - to research and begin writing his next novel, provisionally entitled ‘The Land Agent’.