A recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Simpson has published poems in "Prairie Schooner," "The Cortland Review," "Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review," "Passager," "Atlanta Review," "The Louisville Review," and "Margie," among other literary journals. Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas, published his essay "Line Breaks the Way I See Them" and four of his poems in "Beauty Is A Verb: The New Poetry of Disability," a 2012 ALA Notable Poetry Book called "unusual and powerful" by "Publisher's Weekly" in a starred review.