Tracy Lee Simmons is a writer, professor and journalist who has written widely for the New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Sun, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion, Crisis, and the Sewanee Review along with other newspapers and magazines, including the Classical Teacher magazine. He served as associate editor for National Review under William F. Buckley Jr. and is the author of Climbing Parnassus, a bestselling case for classical education in America that won a Choice Award for “Outstanding Academic Title” in 2002. He holds a master’s degree in Classics from Oxford and was the founding director of the Dow Program in American Journalism at Hillsdale College. He was the recipient of the 2005 Paideia Prize award given by the CiRCE Institute for lifetime contribution to classical education.