Djelloul Marbrook was born in 1934 in Algiers, Algeria, to parents Juanita Guccione (née Rice) and Ben Aissa ben Mabrouk. Marbook's father was Algerian and he moved with only his mother to New York City when he was a young child. He was raised by his extended family, primarily by his grandmother and aunts. Marbook grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip, and Manhattan. He attended Dwight Preparatory School, and Columbia University.Marbook worked as a soda jerk, newspaper vendor, messenger, theater and nightclub concessionaire, and served in the United States Navy and as a Merchant Marine before beginning his newspaper career. Marbrook learned photography in the United States Navy and became a reporter-photographer.He was a reporter for The Providence Journal and an editor for the Elmira Star-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, The Washington Star, and Media News newspapers in northeast Ohio, and Passaic and Paterson, New Jersey. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in a number of journals.