Martin J. Smith

Martin J. Smith is a veteran journalist, novelist, and magazine editor who has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards. A former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Smith currently is editor-in-chief of Orange Coast, the market-leading monthly magazine of Orange County, Calif. Bloomsbury just released his latest book, The Wild Duck Chase, about the Federal Duck Stamp Contest and the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting. Smith decided to write about the Federal Duck Stamp Contest and the landmark conservation program behind it because, in it, he sees “a ray of hope and living reminder of what the American federal government once was, and someday could be again: visionary, idealistic, and inarguably effective.”

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he began writing professionally while a student at Pennsylvania State University in the late 1970s. His 15-year career as a newspaper reporter took him around the world, from the rural poverty of Southwestern Pennsylvania to Nevada’s Mustang Ranch bordello; from the riot-torn streets of Los Angeles to the revolutionary streets of Manila; from pre-glasnost Siberia to the new frontier of cyberspace. Smith now lives in Southern California.

His Anthony Award-nominated first novel, Time Release (Jove, 1997), featured memory expert Jim Christensen and examined the volatile issue of repressed memories against the backdrop of a sensational product-tampering case. In Shadow Image (Jove, 1998), a sequel inspired both by the plight of former President Ronald Reagan and the JonBenet Ramsey murder case in Colorado, Christensen is drawn into the labyrinth of Alzheimer’s disease and a complex web of lies created by one of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest and most powerful political families. Straw Men (Jove, 2001), the third book in Smith’s “Memory Series” and a finalist for both the 2002 Edgar Award and the 2002 Barry Award, begins when DNA evidence frees an unpredictable and disfigured young man known as the Scarecrow eight years after he was convicted of a vicious sexual attack. The new evidence forces the woman whose testimony put him behind bars to confront memories that are violent, vivid—and apparently wrong. The fourth book in the series, Hyperlink, is not yet published.

Smith also is the co-author, with Patrick J. Kiger, of Oops: 20 Life Lessons From the Fiascoes That Shaped America (HarperCollins 2006), which Publishers Weekly called “as informative as it is entertaining,” and Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore That Shaped Modern America (HarperResource 2004),” about which PW concluded: “All history should be this much fun.”

He contributed the story “Dark Matter” to the Orange County Noir crime fiction anthology (Akashic 2010), and wrote the introduction to Meeting Across the River (Bloomsbury USA 2005), an anthology of short stories inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song of the same title. Smith has taught magazine and feature writing, and currently is a faculty member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.