Orly Castel-Bloom

Orly Castel-Bloom was born in 1960 in Tel Aviv

Castel-Bloom was born in Tel Aviv in 1960 to a family of French-speaking Jews from Egypt. Her family had come to Israel in 1949. Her father worked for El Al and her mother worked at a bank.

She finished high school at the Herzliya Gymnasium and then served in the IDF in Sinai. She studied film at Tel Aviv University for a year and theater at the Beit Zvi school in Ramat Gan.

Her first story collection, Not Far from the Center of Town, came out in 1987 with Am Oved. Her 1992 novel Dolly City was adapted for the stage. In Human Parts, published in 2002, she was the first Israeli novelist to write about Palestinian suicide bombings.

She has lectured at Harvard, UCLA, Cambridge and Oxford and teaches creative writing at Tel Aviv University. She was married to Gadi Bloom, has 2 children and lives in Tel Aviv.