Simon Rae

Simon Rae

Simon Rae is a poet, playwright, prose writer and broadcaster. For a decade he wrote topical poems for the Guardian, and for five of those years he presented Radio 4’s popular request programme, Poetry Please! In 1998 Faber published his definitive biography of W.G.Grace, and the following year he won the National Poetry Competition. His poetry collections include Soft Targets (with cartoons by Willie Rushton) (Bloodaxe), Rapid Response: Guardian Poems 1991-1996 (Headland), The Face of War (with Ronald Searle) (Previous Parrot Press) and Gift Horses (Enitharmon). Prose works include It’s Not Cricket (Faber), and the children’s novels Unplayable (Top Edge Press), Keras (David Fickling Books) and Medusa’s Butterfly (Corgi).

Simon is now publishing the third of his Inspector Dalliance detective series. Hangman, follows Bodyline and The Pillbox Murders, all published by Nine Elms Books. He has edited several anthologies, including The Faber Book of Murder and The Faber Book of Christmas, and co-edited The 20th Century in Poetry (Ebury) with Michael Hulse. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at three universities, taught creative writing for many years and co-founded The Writer’s Project which offers a mentoring service to anyone needing help with their writing. More recently he has taken up ghostwriting and is a member of United Ghostwriters.