Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of many books and numerous articles and essays. She is also a journalism academic and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne. She has won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism, a Foreign Press Association Award and a number of Quill Awards, including for her reporting from the Philippines with photojournalist Dave Tacon. Her most recent work is a biography of the current Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, published this year. Other recent work includes a Quarterly Essay Cry Me A River: the Tragedy of the Murray-Darling Basin which was published in March 2020, and a biography of Penny Wong, released in October 2019. Simons co-wrote the biography of former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser. Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs won both the Book of the Year and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2011.