Charlie May Fletcher was born in Drew County between Tillar and Monticello on August 17, 1897. Her parents were Charles Wayman and Mary (Jackson) Hogue. The Hogues moved to Memphis a few years later, and Fletcher was educated in the public schools there. After the death of her first husband, Walter Lowenstein, Fletcher went to Paris and studied art at the Grand Chaumiere. There she met and married Howard Simon. Despite their divorce in 1935, she would use his name as a pseudonym for all of her literary works.

Publication in 1933 of Fletcher s article in Scribner's Magazine, "Retreat to the Land," caught the attention of John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas's 1939 Pulitzer prize-winning poet. They met in 1934 and were married on January 18, 1936. Simon’s autobiographical Johnswood, written after Fletcher's death in 1950, tells the story of their marriage.

Fletcher, who published twenty-nine works during her literary career, won the 1947 Boys Club Junior Book Award for Joe Mason, the 1958 Albert Schweitzer Book Prize for A Seed Shall Serve, and the 1970 Jewish Book Club Award for Martin Buber. In 1970, the Arkansas Board of Education created the Charlie May Simon Award for children's literature. The recipient is chosen by a vote of grade school pupils throughout the state.

One of the state's most prolific writers, Fletcher died on March 21, 1977. A bibliography of her works may be found in Charlie May Simon by Lyman E. Hagen.