Marie Halun Bloch is best known for her Ukrainian-themed children's books, but also was a writer and translator on a variety of subjects. She also did considerable research into her family history and the history of her ancestral villages. She travelled extensively to Ukraine and Eastern Europe beginning in the 1960s through the 1990s, and wrote extensively about her experiences.

She was born in 1909 in Komarno, Ukraine, daughter of Rudolf Halun and Sofia Pelensky Halun, and emigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. She received her primary and secondary school education in the Evanston, Ill. public school system and received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in economics from the University of Chicago. She worked as an economist for the U.S. Department of Labor in the 1930s.

She was the author of 18 fiction and non-fiction books for children and two books for adults. Her most popular works included "Aunt America", an American Library Association Notable Book, and "Ukrainian Folk Tales", which was illustrated by Jacques Hnizdovsky. She was a longtime member of the Authors' League of America, the Authors' Guild, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, from which she received several awards, the Colorado Authors' League, and the Denver Women's Press Club. A resident of Denver, Colorado for 50 years, she lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1993 until her death in 1998. She was a member of the parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in both Denver and Boston.

Note that for much of her life she believed that she was born in 1910, not 1909, therefore her LOC name authority record has her years as 1910-1998.