Rob McClure Smith was born in Scotland. His stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Manchester Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Barcelona Review, StoryQuarterly, J Journal and many other literary magazines, and he was recipient of the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award. His critical monograph The Seductions of Emily Dickinson won the Elizabeth Agee Prize, and was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. A recipient of the Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, he works at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he is John and Elaine Fellowes Distinguished Professor of English. His story collection The Violence was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2015. 

He writes noir fiction and occasionally poetry as Rob McClure. The darker half’s novel, The Scotsman, winner of the Black Springs Crime Fiction Prize, was published in the UK in 2023 and the USA in 2024.