Chris Ayres is an English-born author, journalist and screenwriter, best known for War Reporting for Cowards (2005) and for co-authoring Ozzy Osbourne’s memoir I Am Ozzy (2009), which became a New York Times bestseller. He was nominated as Foreign Correspondent of the Year (2004) and Feature Writer of the Year (2015) at the British Press Awards.
Chris Ayres was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1975. He studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Hull. The university later named a student prize after him. He completed a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism at City University, London.
Ayres began his journalism career at The Times of London, where he was later appointed Los Angeles bureau chief. In his late twenties, he was assigned to cover the 2003 invasion of Iraq, embedded with the U.S. Marine Corps. This experience became the subject of War Reporting for Cowards, described by The New York Times as “hilarious” and “visceral.” The memoir is now studied in journalism schools. Ayres later said he was “a coward, but a committed one,” reflecting on the surreal and sometimes absurd reality of modern war coverage.
In 2010, he published a second memoir, Death by Leisure, which explored life and anxiety in 21st-century California. He continued writing long-form features, columns, and interviews for publications including Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, Forbes Magazine, Condé Nast Traveller and British GQ, where he remains a contributing editor.
As a co-author with Ozzy Osbourne, Ayres helped write both I Am Ozzy and its follow-up, Trust Me, I'm Dr Ozzy. The first won the Literary Achievement award at the 2010 Guys Choice Awards.
As a screenwriter, Chris Ayres has sold scripts to Apple TV+, CBS and Ingenious Media. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lucie and their two children.
