Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was born in Yuba City, California and was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than twenty years, he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC.

In his spare time, Brendan enjoys writing, exercising, collecting comic books and action figures, and performing with his rock band, Geppetto's Wüd.

In 2022, Brendan published his first novel, The Violin Conspiracy (Anchor Books), a GMA Book Club Pick, the riveting story of a young Black musician who discovers that his old family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius: when it’s stolen on the eve of the world’s most prestigious classical music competition, he risks everything to get it back. In 2023, Brendan published his second novel, Symphony of Secrets (Anchor Books), about a music historian who discovers that the world's greatest composer may have stolen the music from a neurodivergent Black woman – and the powers-that-be will do anything to silence the historian. Brendan is now at work on his third novel, to be published in early 2025.