Karline Smith

Karline Smith is an award-winning Black British writer born to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in the 1960s. Raised in Longsight, Manchester, she is widely recognised as one of the first Black British women to write crime fiction centred on drug gangs and inner-city life. She is the author of Moss Side Massive, later dramatised by Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, Full Crew and Goosebumps and Butterflies are Fairy Tales. Her short story “Ezekiel’s Valley” won the Vera Bell Prize.

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Her fiction is known for its unflinching portrayal of inner-city life, emotional honesty and attention to the humanity of characters too often overlooked by mainstream fiction. Her work explores crime, family, class, survival, migration, Black British identity and the difficult tenderness that exists within damaged communities.

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Karline’s short fiction includes “Letters to Andy Cole” in Penguin’s The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories; “Promise” in Sceptre’s Brit Pulp!; “Dirty, Evil Greed” in Comma Press’s M.O.: Crimes of Practice; “The Whistling Bird” in Comma Press’s RESIST: Stories of Uprising; and “The Captain” in The Cuckoo Cage.

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She has also completed an unpublished collection of stories exploring Black British and Caribbean lives through love, estrangement, grief, migration, family rupture and survival. From this collection, “The Architecture of the Void” was shortlisted for the 2026 Bridport Prize Short Story Award.

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Writing as N’Jaia Smith, Karline is the author of The Zewditu Books, a trilogy of literary historical fiction set in sixteenth-century Abyssinia. Centred on Queen Asebiyah, Wubit, Mehari and Urael, the series combines African historical atmosphere, mythic resonance and intimate emotional drama in an exploration of memory, inheritance and power.

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Karline has also written for television and radio. She lives in Greater Manchester, has been writing since the age of ten, and is available for readings, author talks and literary events.