This collection focuses on the professional career of award winning journalist, former Speech Writer and Press Secretary, bestselling author of narrative non-fiction and professor, Stephen G. Bloom.

The bulk of this collection is made up of drafts of manuscripts from his major novels and creative works, each accompanied by extensive research notes and correspondence, as well as promotional materials relating to each work's release. Each of these can be found in the PROJECTS series.

The Brazil Chronicles (University of Missouri Press), is the history of an eclectic English-language expat newspaper in Rio de Janeiro that dates to 1879. Bloom’s narrative work is exemplified by three other of his bestselling books, Postville (Harcourt, 2000), The Oxford Project (Welcome Books, 2008), and Tears of Mermaids (St. Martin’s, 2009). Postville details an escalating civil war between ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews and Lutherans in a rural Iowa meatpacking community.

The Oxford Project tells the intimate stories of 100 residents of Oxford, Iowa, a small town in Iowa over a 23-year period accompanied by the photographs of Peter Feldstein. Tears of Mermaids traces a single pearl from diver’s hand to woman’s neck. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality (University of California Press, 2021) is the story of the Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment, using eye color to simulate racism. In The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire,Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold (Regan Arts, 2018) Bloom paints with vivid imagery, the biography of a San Francisco libertine who performed fifty thousand hygienic, albeit illegal, abortions from 1906-1959. Other significant projects in this series is the "Iowa Journalists Oral History Project" and Three Seconds: A Murder, Place, and Time.

Live telephone hookup by Bloom coming out of Santiago, Chile can be found in the AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS series.

A sampling of Bloom's literary and journalism awards, honors, commemorative clippings,and Bloom's professional and personal ephemera make up the AWARDS AND EPHEMERA Series. Some of Bloom's personal ephemera includes identification cards, fliers from social gatherings and personal milestones,photographs, his plane ticket to Brazil, and a copy of Estadio Chile by Victor Jara. Professional ephemera includes official press badges from Bloom's time in Brazil.

Materials and correspondence related to grants and fellowships awarded to Stephen Bloom are listed out in the GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS series.

Press releases and articles about Bloom's short yet noteworthy time as press secretary to Mayor of San Francisco Frank Jordan for 71 days in 1992 make up the OFFICE OF THE MAYOR OF SAN FRANCISCO series.

In the OVERSIZE series, all oversize newspaper, magazine, and correspondence are filed together under this series.

Bloom's published articles and essays appearing in both academic journals and mass-circ magazines, and creative works make up the PUBLICATIONS series. Alongside these materials include a sampling of newspaper clippings from stories and news features published by major news agencies. News agencies and organizations include The Dallas Morning News, The Sacramento Bee, and The Los Angeles Times. Notes and news story ideas, drafts or "slugs," and correspondence can also be found in this series.

The PROFESSIONAL series includes the following subseries: Press and promotions,professional correspondence,professional portfolio, professional talks and events, and Teaching documents and projects. Teaching documents and projects focus on Bloom's time here at the University of Iowa and include syllabi, lectures, assignments, spot forms, correspondence, and "The Riverside Project" from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.