Steve Jobs' Sister: Mona Simpson--Novelist

Mona Simpson was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a political science professor. Her parents divorced in 1962.  Her mother was an American of Swiss and German descent and her father was Syrian. She later took her stepfather's surname, Simpson.

She is the biological younger sister of Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Apple.  Steve Jobs, the eldest sibling, was placed for adoption by their then-unmarried parents (who married 10 months later).  Her 1987 novel, "Anywhere But Here," is dedicated to her mother and "my brother Steve Jobs." She first met Steve Jobs when they were adults, after she invited him to a party promoting "Anywhere But Here" where she revealed that they were siblings; Jobs was 27. The interactions between Mona Simpson and Steve Jobs, and learning how similar they were, had a major effect on Steve Jobs. Steve Lohr of the New York Times wrote at that time "The effect of all this on Steve Jobs seems to be a certain sense of calming fatalism — less urgency to control his immediate environment and a greater trust that life’s outcomes are, to a certain degree, wired in the genes." A few years earlier, Steve Jobs was staunch on most of his character having been formed from his experiences, not his birth parents or genetics (Steve Jobs frequently referred to his adopted parents as "the only real parents" he ever had). From Simpson, Steve Jobs would learn more details about their parents.

She was married to the television writer and producer Richard Appel and they have two children. Appel, a writer for The Simpsons, used his wife's name for Homer Simpson's mother, beginning with the episode "Mother Simpson".

Mona Simpson's Career:

She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied with Jackson Burgess, Seamus Heaney, Leonard Michaels, and Thom Gunn. While at Berkeley she received a B.A. in English. Simpson then worked as a journalist before moving to New York, where she enrolled at Columbia University, and earned an M.F.A. She worked as an editor for Paris Review during this period of time. (Steve Jobs' Sister: Mona Simpson--Novelist)

At Columbia she began her first published novel, Anywhere but Here, the story of a turbulent mother-daughter relationship. The book became a bestseller when published by Knopf in 1987, and was subsequently adapted into a film in 1999. Anywhere But Here was followed by The Lost Father (which was based on her attempts to find her father Jandali, who had left her and her mother when Simpson was aged five) and A Regular Guy. She has since published the novel Off Keck Road, which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award. Excerpts from her new novel My Hollywood have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, and on This American Life.

Mona Simpson is also a contributor to various anthologies and essay collections. She is the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College.

Mona Simpson's Main Works:

Anywhere But Here (1986)
The Lost Father (1992)
A Regular Guy (1996)
Off Keck Road (2000)
My Hollywood (2010)

Refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Simpson_(novelist)

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