Gary G. Steele was born into the Romani sub-ethnic group of Romaničel, into a family running a travelling circus, and from early on he spent most of the year on the road, later also as a child performer. His mother was the granddaughter of English Romani immigrants to the US, and his father was the grandson of French-German immigrants. He studied English and Spanish at Loyola University in New Orleans. He received his master's degree in literature and linguistics from the University of Florida. From 1966 to 1969, he served as a volunteer with the American Peace Corps in the West African Republic of Niger. From 1971 to 1983, he directed programmes and taught in the Florida Community College system. From 1983 to 1988, he served as deputy director of the Peace Corps for education in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). He then spent five years with the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. For more than twenty years, he worked for JSI/International as a consultant for developing countries. During his time in academia, he wrote the book Shortcuts to Basic Writing Skills: An Innovative Approach to College Composition, published by Holt Rinehart & Winston. The work has been reprinted.
A series of three semi-autobiographical books about a Romani family circus (The Gypsy Family Circus of 1933, 1934, and 1935) was his first work of fiction in a long series of mainly academic texts. He has written several more books of fiction since, for example Saving St. Stan’s (2021), The Old Villa in Provence (2023) or Surviving a Catholic Military School: A Memoir (2024).
Photo: the author's private archive
