Simon Parkin is an author and journalist. He is contributing writer for the New Yorker, a regular contributor to the Guardian's Long Read, a critic for The Observer newspaper, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Parkin's work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, the Guardian, New Statesmen, BBC and other publications, and has been collected in the anthology "The Best American Nonrequired Reading". His first book, "Death by Video Game," was published in 2016. His second book, "A Game of Birds and Wolves," was published in 2020. His third book, "The Island of Extraordinary Captives," was published in 2023.