Phil Bloom is a lifelong resident of Indiana. He enjoyed two careers before retiring from both--thirty-three years as a newspaper reporter and editor (the last eighteen as an award-winning outdoors editor at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) and ten years as communications director for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. During that time, he logged thousands of miles crisscrossing Indiana on everything from interstates to gravel roads. Bloom is an active member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and served as the group's president in 2008 and 2018. He is an Eagle Scout, an Indiana Certified Master Naturalist, and lives in Fort Wayne where volunteers with the American Red Cross.