Rob McClure Smith was born in Scotland. His short fiction has 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 story collection The Violence was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2015. A 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.

He also writes poetry and noir fiction as Rob McClure. His poetry has appeared in New Writing Scotland, Irish Pages, Poetry Scotland, Dust and many other magazines, and he was awarded the James McCash Prize. His noir, The Scotsman, winner of the Black Springs Crime Fiction Prize, was published in the UK in 2023 and the USA in 2024.