Gary Bloom grew up in Minneapolis and attended what is now Minnesota State University-Mankato, where he studied sociology. He has been a teaching assistant in a psychiatric hospital, a driving instructor for spinal cord injury patients, and a computer programmer for the U.S. Navy. His articles, photography, and poetry have been widely published in newspapers, magazines and websites, including Literary Hatchet, Liquid Imagination, Milwaukee Magazine, The Buffalo News, The Grand Rapids Press, Art Times Journal, and Black Diaspora. He lived in New Orleans for many years and now lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.