François Bloemhof was born in 1962 in Paarl. He made his debut on the South African literary scene in 1991 by winning the De Kat prize for his novel Die nag het net een oog. His next three books were all thrillers of some sort, before he published largely unclassifiable works like Storieboek, Hostis and Klipgooi.
Because younger readers liked his books, he began to also write specifically for them, with such success that he became sidetracked for a while. He soon had a host of ATKV-Veertjies (a competition in which young readers select the winning books themselves) as well as prizes for the teenage market, including for Slinger-slinger and Nie vir kinders nie (in the Tafelberg/Sanlam Youth Literature Competition) and Stad aan die einde van die wêreld (in the Maskew Miller Longman Literary Competition).
After a five-year layoff from the adult fiction market, Bloemhof returned to the genre in which he started with Spinnerak, featuring Alma van der Pool, the first ever female detective in Afrikaans fiction. She returned in Jagseisoen (2007).
