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Carey Bunks was born in New York City and grew up in Westport, Connecticut. At the age of twelve his grandmother gave him The Golden Book of Magic and he began to develop an interest in prestidigitation and legerdemain. Thirsty for knowledge it didn't take long for the entire collection of magic books from the local public library to pass through his hands.

Television can have a negative effect on children and as a case in point it was an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show that inspired Carey to teach himself juggling. Juggling seemed to be a natural complement to magic since, after all, magic tricks are just juggling where the skillful part is hidden in order to create the illusion of magic. Being the pre-Carlos-inien epoch of juggling there weren't a lot of books on the subject at the time. Nevertheless, there was the then classic work of Ken Benge entitled Three Ball Juggling. The cover page picture of Ken juggling while idling on a unicycle soon led to skinned knees and ankles as the unicycle quickly became a new passion.

Admitted to Tufts University Carey decided to study electrical engineering (hey, electricity is pretty magical). He took time off from Tufts when he was admitted to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Clown College. After graduating from Clown College he returned to the Boston area where he started street performing during the clement months at Faneuil Hall and Harvard Square. His performance style was greatly influenced by contemporary street theater groups of the Boston area such as The Amazing Fantasy Jugglers, Locomotion Circus, Slaphappy, and The Shakespeare Brothers to name a few. In 1985 he won an open audition to represent the independent television station WQTV in Boston as their entertainment personality. Not including shows done for WQTV he entertained more than 1000 groups and organizations in the Boston area up to 1986.

From 1987 to 1995 Carey lived in Paris, France. During this time he learned to do his entire show in French. In Paris he performed for l'Orchestre de Paris and the Japanese Embassy amongst others. He also taught numerous lasso workshops notably at l'Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cirque, and at many European juggling conventions.

Carey Bunks also has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of numerous scientific papers on signal processing, optimal control, seismic inversion, and imaging. He currently lives in the Boston area and is a Senior Scientist at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For Carey, his whole life seems to be a consequence of his grandmother's gift, The Golden Book of Magic. If she had given him The Golden Book of Dinosaurs who knows what might have become of him