David Simon

David Judah Simon (born February 9, 1960) is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer best known for his work on The Wire (2002–08).

The drama about the New York porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s starred producer Maggie Gyllenhaal and executive producer James Franco, and aired from 2017 to 2019.

In March 1977, when Simon was still in high school, Simon's father was one of a group of over 140 people held hostage (and later released) in Washington, D.C. by former national secretary of the Nation of Islam Hamaas Abdul Khaalis in the Hanafi Siege.

Simon graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and wrote for the school newspaper, The Tattler.

He worked for The Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years (1982–95), wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991), and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997) with Ed Burns.

Upon leaving college, Simon worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995.

Simon was hired by the Baltimore Sun for a piece he wrote about Lefty Driesell, who was then the men's basketball coach at the University of Maryland.

Driesell had been extremely frustrated that one of his players was suspended from playing for sexual impropriety and called the victim, threatening to destroy her reputation if she did not withdraw her complaint.

This was all done while the university administration was listening to the call, but they did nothing.

In 1983, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park.

While at college he wrote and was editor for The Diamondback, and became friends with contemporary David Mills.

The idea came from a conversation on Christmas Eve 1985 in the unit office, where Det. Bill Lansey told him, "If someone just wrote down what happens in this place for one year, they'd have a goddamn book."

Simon approached the police department and the editors of the paper to receive approval.

The detectives were initially slow to accept him, but he persevered in an attempt to "seem … like part of the furniture".

Simon was a union captain when the writing staff went on strike in 1987 over benefit cuts.

He remained angry after the strike ended and began to feel uncomfortable in the writing room.

He searched for a reason to justify a leave of absence and settled on the idea of writing a novel.

"I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun," says Simon.

In 1988, disillusioned, Simon took a year's leave to go into the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit to write a book.

The book was based on his experiences shadowing the Baltimore Police Department homicide unit during 1988.

He has a brother, Gary Simon, and a sister, Linda Evans, who died in 1990.

Simon's leave of absence from The Sun resulted in his first book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991).

The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer.

Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner (2000).

He was the creator, executive producer, head writer, and show runner of the HBO television series The Wire (2002–2008).

He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into a television mini-series, and served as the show runner for the project.

He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011.

Simon also created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which aired for four seasons.

Following Treme, Simon wrote the HBO mini-series Show Me a Hero with journalist William F. Zorzi, a colleague at The Baltimore Sun and on The Wire.

Simon and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos reunited to create original series The Deuce.

Lefty Driesell was later given a 5-year contract and, in 2018, he was inducted into the ACC Hall of Fame.

Simon spent most of his career covering the crime beat.

A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was "God's work".

Simon says that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by The Washington Post's coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience.

Simon's next series, The Plot Against America, debuted in 2020.

We Own This City was developed and written by George Pelecanos and Simon, and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.

The six-episode limited series premiered on HBO on April 25, 2022.

Simon was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy Simon (née Ligeti), a homemaker, and Bernard Simon, a former journalist and then public relations director for B'nai B'rith for 20 years.

Simon was raised in a Jewish family, and had a bar mitzvah ceremony.

His family roots are in Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Slovakia (his maternal grandfather had changed his surname from "Leibowitz" to "Ligeti").