Simon Parkin is a British author and journalist for magazines, newspapers and websites. He is contributing writer for the New Yorker, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society 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 non-fiction books, including 'Death by Video Game', a New York Times Book Review 'Recommended Read', and 'A Game of Birds and Wolves', ‘The Island of Extraordinary Captives’, which won the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize, and The Forbidden Garden, a finalist in the 2025 Orwell Prize. Parkin has written about video games throughout his career, including as the video game critic for The Observer newspaper. He also hosts the popular My Perfect Console podcast, in which notable guests pick the five games they would like to install in their very own fictional games machine. He grew up in London, graduated from King’s College, and now lives in West Sussex.