Martin J. Smith is a veteran journalist and magazine editor who has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his crime novels have been short-listed for three of the publishing industry’s most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award. In addition to his five novels, Smith has written five nonfiction books, including “Going to Trinidad: A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads.” The book was published in hardcover by Bower House and as an audio book by Tantor Media in April 2021. It was one of three History category finalists for a 2022 Colorado Book Award, and was long-listed for a “Reading the West” award from the Mountain & Plains Independent Booksellers Association.

“For generations of transgender people, ‘Trinidad, Colorado’ was code for ‘sex-change capital of the world,’ ” writes Susan Stryker, author of “Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution.” “Martin Smith brings this somewhat secret history to a wider audience, in an expansive, entertaining narrative chock full of interesting people and previously untold stories.”

Smith’s fiction and nonfiction work has drawn critical praise in equal measure. The average Amazon customer rating for Smith’s five novels and five nonfiction books is 4.29 out of 5. International bestseller James Ellroy said “Time Release,” Smith’s 1997 debut novel, “sizzles, cooks, and singes,” calling it “a whipcord thriller full of deftly drawn characters, intrigue, and taut action.” Ellroy also called Smith “a thriller force to be reckoned with.” New York Times bestseller Michael Connelly described Smith’s most recent suspense-thriller, 2016’s “Combustion,” a “page-turner with a kicker at the end — you can’t ask for anything better. Intricately plotted and full of character, this one is a great ride that burns with the intensity of a California wildfire.”

In November 2017, Globe Pequot published “Mr. Las Vegas Has a Bad Knee,” a collection of Smith’s essays about the people, places, and peculiarities of the American Southwest, where he lived and worked between 1985 and 2016. The Los Angeles Review of Books called the collection “compelling and readable,” and called Smith “a master of the essay and human interest profile form” and “one of the best nonfiction writers today.”

His 2012 nonfiction book, “The Wild Duck Chase,” about the Federal Duck Stamp Contest and the strange and wonderful world of competitive duck painting, inspired Brian Golden Davis’ documentary film “The Million Dollar Duck,” which won both the Jury and Audience awards at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. The film aired multiple times on Discovery Communications’ Animal Planet in September 2016. David Allen Sibley, author of the Sibley Guides to birds and trees, called Smith’s book “well-written, insightful, and just plain fun to read.”

In November 2026, Open Road Media published Smith's sixth novel, 27 Knots. Novelist Aimee Liu calls it “a masterpiece,” saying it “deserves a place of honor between Sophie’s Choice and The Things They Carried.” Suspense author Cam Torrens calls it “the year’s best war story … a heartbreaking tale of ‘profound love and appalling violence.’” Author Samantha Dunn calls it “a war novel, yes, but measured on a human scale, about how we go on living and trying to love in the wake of hard choices and moral conundrums. Compelling, fierce and all too bittersweet. Martin J. Smith has created characters who will live in your head for years to come.”

A former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Smith was editor-in-chief of Orange Coast magazine in Orange County, Calif., between 2007 and 2016, during which time the Western Publishing Association five times named Orange Coast the best city/metropolitan magazine in the western U.S., including four consecutive wins between 2013 and 2016. As an editor Smith worked with a diverse group of writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and bestselling authors such as Anne Lamott, Joseph Wambaugh, Walter Mosley, Amy Tan, Martin Dugard, Janet Fitch, Edward Humes, and James Ellroy.

Smith now lives in Granby, Colorado, where he helped found the Grand County Community of Writers and is past president of Habitat for Humanity of Grand County.