Simon Okotie is a fiction writer, essayist, and environmental consultant. He is the author of Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon? (2012), In the Absence of Absalon (2017) and After Absalon (2020), an acclaimed trilogy of novels published by Salt: ‘Fiction as original as this deserves a long shelf life’ (the London Review of Books). His fiction and essays have appeared in Financial Times Weekend, Firmament, Tolka, Confingo and gorse and at The London Magazine, 3:AM Magazine and The White Review. 'Bindings' and 'When viewed from the head rather than the foot' were selected for the Best British Short Stories 2021 and 2025, respectively. The Future of the Novel, a book-length essay, is forthcoming from Melville House (Spring 2025).Simon was a Creative Fellow at the Samuel Beckett Research Centre at the University of Reading for 2022-23 (where he is now completing his PhD) and is the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at City, University of London, for 2023-25. He was a judge for the 2022 Manchester Fiction Prize – the UK’s largest prize for unpublished work – and for the 2024 Orwell Prize for political fiction. Simon worked for an engineering company in Denmark as part of an international team of technical writers and translators after graduating from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton. He has Master’s degrees in both Philosophy and Transport Planning, and wrote the environment part of the business case for the £18.8 billion Crossrail project (the new Elizabeth line railway through London). He is a Chartered Environmentalist working on the environmental impact assessment of major infrastructure schemes.