Simon Parke was a priest in the Church of England for 20 years. He worked for three years in a supermarket, where he stacked shelves, worked on the tills, filled in on the bakery, chaired the shop union and had a very good laugh and cry with his colleagues. He left, with both sadness and gratitude, to risk the freelance adventure.

Simon runs The Bloggers of the Round Table, a group blog which is published on Simon’s own website, simonparke.com.
           
His most recent books are The One-Minute Mystic, Shelf Life, The Enneagram: A Private Session with the World’s Greatest Psychologist, and The Beautiful Life.

Simon has been writing professionally for 25 years. He started in the dismantling business of satire, producing scripts for TV and radio, including Spitting Image. He won a Sony radio award for his work on Simon Mayo’s Big Holy One.

He has written a trilogy of desert novellas called Desert Depths, Desert Ascent and Desert Child. These follow the fortunes of the struggling Abbot Peter in the monastery of St James-the-Less. They were followed by a controversial reflection on family and childhood, through the dark and surprising lense of Jesus’ experiences, called Forsaking the Family.

Simon runs, leads retreats, meets with people looking for a new way in their life, and follows the beautiful game. He also prefers to deal with the puppeteer within rather than the puppet without.