Christopher John Farley holds one of American journalism's most sought-after jobs as Time magazine's pop-music critic. Farley's post gives him ready access to some of the biggest celebrities in the entertainment industry, and he has used that influence to pen biographies of Halle Berry and Aaliyah. Farley is also a novelist, having made his debut with a satirical novel, My Favorite War, in 1996. In 2005 his second novel, Kingston by Starlight, was published by Crown.

Born in 1966 in Kingston, Jamaica, Farley's parents moved to the United States and he grew up in Brockport, a small town in upstate New York whose largest neighbor is the city of Rochester. Brockport is also home to a State University of New York campus, where both of his parents spent their careers. His father, Rawle, was a professor of economics, while his mother Ena taught African-American studies. Though he later became one of the most-widely read music critics in America, Farley had few ambitions for a musical career himself. He had some piano lessons and, as he said in an interview on the JournalismJobs Web site, "I also played trumpet, baritone, and clarinet in high school, and I was terrible at all of them."

Books by Christopher John Farley

Kingston by Starlight: A Novel

by Christopher John Farley

Irish-born Anne Bonny is only a teenager when she is left destitute by her mother's death. Abandoned by her father, she seems destined to be forgotten by the world. But Anne chooses to seek her fortune in the lush tropics of the colonial West Indies, where she passes herself off as a young man named Bonn. She finds work as a ship's hand, sailing under the command of Calico Jack Rackam, a notorious and charismatic pirate with a bounty on his head.