She is best known for her original songwriting, her album of cover songs by Russian punk poet Yanka Dyagileva, and her collection of autobiographical essays You Must Go And Win.
She came to the United States at a young age as the daughter of political refugees (her father, theoretical physicist Alexander Vilenkin was blacklisted for 'refusal to cooperate' after resisting recruitment into the KGB).
Simone relocated to Brooklyn, and in 2008 released Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware, a collection of songs by the late Russian singer-songwriter, Yanka Dyagileva.
In March 2016 she released the book Madonnaland, an essay piece about American singer Madonna and Simone's own analysis of music and pop culture.
[3] You Must Go And Win, Simone's first book, was likewise well received, with Kirkus Reviews calling it "vibrant, taut and humorous"[4] and Publishers Weekly saying "Simone ably juggles the philosophical and the comical, her genuine enthusiasm for arcane subject matter as contagious as the fleas in her long ago apartment.