Barry Shelby was born 1960 in Berkeley, California, where he later attended the University of California. He received a master's degree in journalism in 1984 from Northwestern University in Illinois. From 1984 to June 1997, he was an editor at World Press Review magazine in Manhattan. He moved to Scotland in 1997, ?where he has worked as a caretaker at small and privately owned castle on the Clyde Coast, as a 'temp' with the privatised national railway company as well as a food and drink writer and editor for newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, Glasgow Herald, and The List. He is married to a Scot and lives in Glasgow's East End with her, two dogs, and a cat.