Thomas Rendell Curran was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1939.

He was educated at Holloway School, Prince of Wales College, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the University of Toronto. For more than twenty years he was a senior researcher and writer with the Parliamentary Research Branch in Ottawa. Undertow, his first novel, is set in St. John’s, partly in the neighbourhood where he grew up. He currently lives in Ottawa.