Chas Smith is the author of Cocaine + Surfing; Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction; and Reports from Hell. Smith began his career as a foreign correspondent, writing pieces for Vice, Paper, and BlackBook, among others, from Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Azerbaijan, and Colombia, which led to a brief career as a war correspondent for Current TV. He lives in Los Angeles.
