Charlie May Hogue was born on her great-grandmother's farm in Drew County, Arkansas on August 17, 1897. Her parents were Charles Wayman Hogue, a school teacher and writer, and his wife, Mary Gill Hogue. Charlie was named after her father and her mother, a Southern tradition. The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee when Charlie was four years old but paid frequent visits to Drew County while she was growing up. According the Charlie her house was always full of relatives and she often had to sleep on the floor on a pallet instead of in a bed. After finishing High School in Memphis, Charlie attended Memphis State University and Stanford university in California. She also attended art schools in Chicago, Illinois and in Paris, France.

She met and married Howard Simon in Paris in 1926. Mr. Simon was an artist who later illustrated a number of Charlie May Simon's books. The Simons returned to America and lived in New York City for a time before coming back to Charlie's home, to Arkansas, during the Great Depression of the 1930s.for three years they maintained a homestead in Possum Trot, just outside of Russelville, where they lived off the land with no electricity or running water and only a fireplace for heating their home. Charlie enjoyed the hard work but her husband did not and they were divorced in 1936.

Charlie May Simon met and married Charles Gould Fletcher, an Arkansas poet and the 1939 Pulitzer Prize winner, later that year. They moved to Little Rock and built Johnswood, a stone and wood house on Cantrell Road overlooking the Arkansas River where they lived until her husband's death in 1950. Charlie May Simon died in Little Rock on March 21, 1977 at the age of 79. She is buried in the Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.

Charlie May Simon, the writer, had a long and successful career. It didn't start well, though. Her fist book, written when she was just a teenager, was rejected by publishers in 1913. After that she gave up on writing and turned to painting instead. Twenty years after her fist failure she tried writing again and found the success she hadn't as a girl. She wrote an average of a book a year for the rest of her life.

Ms. Simon wrote 29 books for children, young adults, and adults. All were well-received and garnered her the 1947 Boys' Club of America Junior Book Award, the Albert Schweitzer Award in 1958, and the Charles and Bertie J. Schwarz Award in 1969.

A List of Books Authored by Charlie May Simon

Current Winner, 1996-1997

Current Nominees, 1997-1998

List of Winners

Past Nominees - By Year

The Award Process

Charlie May Simon Home Page

This site created by Tracy Patterson and is maintained by the
Learning Resources Center,
Room 102 Mashburn Hall,
University of Central Arkansas,
Conway AR, 72032

Comments? Questions? Please contact our webmaster.