Mona Simpson - Career

Career

Simpson received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. After graduating from Columbia, she worked as an editor for Paris Review. In 1994, she returned to Los Angeles with her husband. In 2001, she started teaching creative writing at UCLA, and also has an appointment at Bard College in New York.

Simpson's novels are a mixture of events from her life and pure fiction. Her first novel, Anywhere But Here (1986), was a critical and popular success, winning the Whiting Prize. It was adapted as the 1999 film Anywhere But Here, starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. A Regular Guy (1996) explores the strained relationship of a Silicon Valley tycoon with a daughter born out of wedlock, whom he did not acknowledge. Off Keck Road (2000), portraying decades in the lives of three women in the Midwest, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Stacey D'Erasmo states that "Off Keck Road marks the place where origin leaves off and improvisation begins."

Simpson's most recent novel, My Hollywood, was published in 2011. It explores the complex relationships, issues of class, and perspectives of two women, a European-American composer and mother in her 30s, and her immigrant nanny from the Philippines, who cares for her son and has five of her own in the Philippines whom she is supporting. The novel alternates between the voices of the two women, contrasting their worlds. Liesl Schillinger suggests that the novel is a "compassionate fictional exploration of this complicated global relationship, Simpson assesses the human cost that the child-care bargain exacts on the amah, on her employer and on the children of both." Ron Charles further argues that:

What really invigorates this novel, though, is the way it alternates between Claire's chapters and chapters narrated by Lola, her 50-year-old Filipino nanny. I was worried early on that Lola would be a Southeast Asian version of the Magical Negro, who exists merely to help some self-absorbed white person reach enlightenment. But she's entirely her own wonderful, troubled character, and her relationship with Claire remains complex and unresolved.