Jeffrey M. Leatherwood was born abroad to American parents in 1970. He spent much of his early childhood in Western Europe before returning to the United States. He finished high school in North Carolina and served a term in the U.S. Army as a Cannon Crewmember (13B) from 1989 to 1991. He then attended Western Carolina University on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1996 with a B.A. in English (Journalism). During this interval, he met and married his wife, J.E. Beck. Returning to Western Carolina, Leatherwood completed a B.S. in United States History, graduating in 1999.

Following a brief stint as a news reporter in Raleigh, Leatherwood returned a third time to the mountains of Western North Carolina. By this time, he had published a few short stories and won an award for lyrical poetry. But his career would take a turn toward scholarly writing as he entered graduate school at Western Carolina in 2003. He devoted his M.A. thesis to the hitherto unexplored story of U.S. Army bomb disposal squads in World War II. He would revise and expand this work, which became his first book-length publication, "Nine From Aberdeen," in 2012.

By this point, Leatherwood had completed his History PhD from West Virginia University (2009) and commenced his teaching career as a specialist in Modern U.S. and World History. He taught four years as a postdoctoral lecturer in Humanities for WVU’s Eberly College of Arts & Sciences. He would publish several articles for academic journals, along with his dissertation on the 1919 Charlotte Streetcar Strike. This latter work would emerge as Leatherwood's second book, "The Quest For Streetcar Unionism in the Carolina Piedmont (1919-23)," published in 2017.

In 2014, Leatherwood was appointed an Associate Professor of History for American Military University. Since this time, he has moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he has also taught history courses at the high school and university levels. With J.E. Beck, he researches the Revolutionary War and has published articles in both North and South Carolina historical journals. His collaborations are not limited to academic history, as he serves as editor and/or co-writer for Beck's fiction projects -- several of which are under copyright at the Library of Congress.

Leatherwood is currently working on his third book, a centennial perspective on the 1927 Marion Parker kidnapping and murder. It is under the working title of "Deciphering the Fox," a reference to Edward Hickman, who called himself 'The Fox' and who led the West Coast police on a three-day manhunt. Using digital resources previously unavailable to authors, Leatherwood aims to present a wide-angle perspective on the case's human impact. This story is often overshadowed by the higher-profile Leopold-Loeb and Lindbergh kidnappings that came before and after.