Trained as a social worker, Bloom has practiced psychotherapy. Currently, Bloom is the Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University (effective July 1, 2010). Previously, she was a lecturer of Creative Writing in the department of English at Yale University, where she taught Advanced Fiction Writing and Writing for Children for the decade 2000-2010.

She has been nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition to novels, Bloom has written articles in periodicals including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon.com. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories and several other anthologies, and has won a National Magazine Award. In 2010, Amazon featured a page from a collection of Bloom's short stories in an ad showing the screen of a Kindle being read at the beach.

Although not a psychologist, her involvement with psychotherapy played a role in writing the Lifetime Television network TV show, State of Mind, which takes a look at the professional lives of psychiatrists. Bloom is listed as creator, a co-executive producer, and head writer for the series..

Bloom received her B.A. in Theater/Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Wesleyan University, and a M.S.W. (Masters of Social Work) from Smith College.

Bloom, who resides in Connecticut, has two daughters and a stepson from her first marriage, to a professor. From the age of 13, she says, she knew she was bisexual, and after her first marriage ended, she lived with a woman for some time. She is married again now, to an architect.

Fiction

• Come to Me: Stories (1993) (short stories)
• Love Invents Us (1997) (novel)
• A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories (2000) (short stories)
• Away (2007) (novel)
• Where the God of Love Hangs Out (2009) (short stories)

Non-fiction

• Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Cross-dressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude (2002) (Psychology)

Screenplays, teleplays and television shows

• State of Mind (2007)