ABOUT SIMON CONWAY
Simon Conway was born in Sacramento, California in 1967. His father was an agricultural ecologist and President of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Royal Geographical Society. His mother is an artist and academic, who specialises in South East Asia. He lived in Lebanon and Thailand as a child.
Simon studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently served as an infantry officer in the British Army, seeing active duty with The Queen’s Own Highlanders (Seaforths and Camerons).
After leaving the military, Simon spent four years living and working in the Peak District and then the island of Islay in the Hebrides and completed his first novel Damaged, which was published by Canongate. The Literary Review described it as “the debut of a roaring and prodigal talent”.
In 1998, Simon joined the demining charity, The HALO Trust. He cleared landmines and explosive remnants of war on the K5 mine-belt in Cambodia and was subsequently involved in battlefield survey and clearance in Kosovo, Abkhazia, Eritrea and Sri Lanka.
In 2004, Simon joined Landmine Action, later renamed Action On Armed Violence, and set up explosive ordnance disposal projects in Western Sahara, Guinea Bissau and Liberia. In 2006, he was made one of three co-Chairs of the global Cluster Munition Coalition and successfully campaigned for the 2008 international treaty that banned cluster bombs. His 2006 report on the use of more than 4 million cluster submunitions in Southern Lebanon helped highlight the indiscriminate effects of the weapon.
In 2014, after two years as a member of the board, Simon re-joined The HALO Trust full-time and has been at the forefront of establishing new clearance projects across Africa, the Middle East and most recently in the South Pacific.
For several years, he was a board member of Article 36, a not-for-profit organisation working to prevent the unintended, unnecessary or unacceptable harm caused by weapons, including lethal autonomous weapons.
Simon has had eight novels published including A Loyal Spy, winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2010. His publishers are Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and Arcade in the USA.
Simon is currently living in Washington, D.C. with his wife the BBC broadcaster Sarah Smith. He has two daughters by his first marriage.
