[9] As of 2021[update], Simons is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at Melbourne University.
[7] Simons was a finalist for a Walkley Award for journalism in 2007 for the story Buried in the Labyrinth, about the release of a paedophile into the community, published in Griffith Review.
[citation needed] In 2015 she won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism for her essay Fallen Angels, published in The Monthly.
The essay is an investigation of sex tourism in the Philippines and the children that have been abandoned there by their Australian fathers.
[10] Her biography of Penny Wong, Senate leader of the Australian Labor Party, was longlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award.