Andrew Hoyem was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, and graduated with his B.A. in 1957. After graduation, Hoyem entered the U.S. Navy, serving from 1957 to 1960 and achieving the rank of lieutenant junior grade. The following year he married Sally Cameron Heimann; the marriage ended in divorce. Hoyem married his second wife, Judith B. Laws, in 1970.

Hoyem lists 1961 as the year in which he formally began his multifaceted career as poet, printer, typographical designer, publisher, and artist. He explains in the introduction to Picture/Poems (1975): "Not until 1961, after I had been released from military service, did poetry begin to dominate my life. That year I settled in San Francisco, embarked on a career as a printer and typographical designer, and fell in with the artists and writers who were identified with the renaissance then occurring in the city. It was...