He studied literature at university and started his journalistic career in the news magazine Cambio, working alongside Gabriel García Márquez.
Most recently, he served as editor-in-chief of Gatopardo magazine of Mexico City.
He has published in a number of fiction and non-fiction genres, including a novel Formas de evasión (Seix Barral, 2016) and a biography of the artist Francis Bacon titled Retrato de una pesadilla (Panamericana, 2008).
In 2017 he was named as one of the Bogotá39, a list of the best young writers in Latin America.
Restrepo Pombo was a fellow at the Fundación Prensa y Democracia at Iberoamerican University and attended workshops at the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo with Tomás Eloy Martínez, Carlos Monsiváis and Martín Caparrós.