Justin Kerr-Smiley was born in 1965 and raised in Scotland. He was educated at Newcastle University. Awarded a BBC bursary for post graduate studies in journalism, he worked as a radio reporter in Sydney and London. He then joined the Associated Press and reported from Northern Ireland, the Balkans, South America and the West Bank.
His first novel Under The Sun is published by Arcadia. The Sunday Telegraph described it as: 'a small masterpiece; the best novel that I have read about war since Captain Corelli's Mandolin'.
In 2011 he received a travel scholarship from the Society of Authors to research Goodbye To The President, a novel about the 1973 coup in Chile. Goodbye To The President was published by Merman Books in 2014.
In 2022 Universe published his third novel Codename Edelweiss, a thriller about the search for Hitler’s son.
He has also had poetry and short fiction published in London Magazine.