Edward Bloor was born on October 12, 1950, in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Edward William and Mary (Cowley) Bloor. He attended high school at Notre Dame and then entered Fordham University in New York City, from where hegraduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973. During his high school and college years, Bloor played a lot of soccer, experience he put to good use in his novel, Tangerine. From 1983 to 1986, Bloor worked as a high school English teacher in Florida, and after that he began a career as an editor of children’s literature at Harcourt Brace School Publishers, in Orlando, Florida.
While reading and editing young-adult novels in the course of his work, Bloor decided to try writing one himself. The result was Tangerine, which was published in 1997. The novel was very successful, and won several major awards, including American Library Association Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, 1998; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination for Best Young Adult Novel, 1998; American Booksellers Association Pick of the List, 1997; and New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, 1997.
Buoyed by the success of Tangerine, Bloor went on to cement his reputation by writing several moreyoung-adult novels over the following decade and a half. These were Crusader (1999), which like Tangerine was set in southern Florida; Story Time (2004), London Calling (2006), Taken(2007),Memory Lane (2010), A Plague Year (2011) and the self-published e-book Summer of Smoke (2014).
Bloor married Pamela Dixon, a teacher, in 1984. They have two children.
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