Simon Van Booy

Simon Van Booy is a British-American writer who lives in the United States. He grew up in rural Wales, but has lived in Kentucky, Paris, Athens, New York City and the Hamptons. Love Begins in Winter won the 2009 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Simon Van Booy has written two collections of short stories, The Secret Lives of People in Love (2011 Finalist Award for The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature) and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the world's richest short story prize. The New York Times said that "Incurable romantics will savor Simon Van Booy's tender, Maupassant-like fables...." While the Los Angeles Times said of Van Booy's, The Secret Lives of People in Love" [that], "One worries, after reading a debut short-story collection this breathtaking, what Simon Van Booy could possibly do for an encore. Write something longer?"

Van Booy's first novel, Everything Beautiful Began After, was released in the US and UK in July 2011. Everything Beautiful Began After was nominated for the 2012 Indies Choice Book Award for Fiction

His second novel, The Illusion of Separateness was released in the US in June 2013 and in the UK in July 2013. Publishers Weekly gave The Illusion of Separateness a starred review, and said "the writing is what makes this remarkable book soar".

Van Booy is the editor of three volumes of philosophy, entitled Why We Fight, Why We Need Love, and Why Our Decisions Don't Matter, which The Economist said "have an instinctive appeal." The Wall Street Journal described Van Booy's books as "brimming with thoughts from history's pre-eminent ponderers."

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  Why We Need Love

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  Why Our Decisions Don't Matter

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  Why We Fight

Van Booy's essays have been published in newspapers internationally, including The New York Times, The New York Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Mail, and The Times. They have also been broadcast on National Public Radio. Van Booy's essays cover topics such as fashion, literacy, history, travel, and living with his daughter as a single-parent.

In 2011, Van Booy delivered his first full-length stage comedy, and wrote an award-winning short film for the Morgans Hotel Group called Love Is Like Life But Longer, directed by Poppy de Villeneuve, and starring Jeremy Strong, Maya Kazan, and Joan Copeland.

Simon Van Booy, New York, 2011

Van Booy lectures frequently at schools, universities, and libraries in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in China. He teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus. He is an advocate of education as a means of social reform, and involved in the Rutgers University Early College Humanities program (REaCH) for young adults living in under-served communities.

In 2009, Van Booy's collection of short stories, Love Begins in Winter, was launched at Partners & Spade in New York City, a studio and storefront which "produces films, books, apparel, and conceptual products as well as marketing and branding projects for select corporate clients." For the launch, Van Booy was the curator of an exhibition of props and dioramas of dramatic scenes from his short story collection, and the collection included custom-made stethoscopes (containing quotes from Van Booy's stories) and vintage Renault workshop posters, all designed by Van Booy. Since 2009, Partners & Spade have carried Van Booy's "custom vintage Antarctic explorers' skis," and cold-weather hats, which he designed to support research in Antarctic regions and raise awareness for the Scott Polar Research Institute at University of Cambridge.

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  Partners & Spade Custom-made Stethoscope

Van Booy's fiction and essays have been translated into over a dozen languages throughout the world. In 2011 he embarked on a multiple city reading tour of China, where his books are available in two different varieties of Chinese.

• 2002: Love & The Five Senses won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize
• 2007: The Secret Lives of People in Love
• 2009: Love Begins in Winter won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
• 2010: Pobble's Way won Society of School Librarians International Honor Book Award
• 2011: Why We Need Love
• 2011: Why Our Decisions Don't Matter
• 2011: Why We Fight
• 2011: Everything Beautiful Began After
• 2012: The Illusion of Separateness
• November 10, 2015: Tales of Accidental Genius: Stories
• April, 2016: Father’s Day: a novel (ISBN 978-0062408945)