After a childhood in Melbourne Gary Maller graduated with first class honours from La Trobe University and taught briefly at Monash University. Later resident in Brisbane, Maller worked as a correspondent for publications in Australia and New York. In 2004 he was awarded an Arts Queensland grant to write a collection of poems exploring narratives and themes in Renaissance Italian art.
Maller's nom de plume pays homage to a race-memory of Poland and the Jewry of Europe through Maller's father who immigrated to Australia by way of Palestine in 1929.