biography book writer

• BookBub Partners Blog

Book Marketing & Publishing Tips

Writing Your Author Bio? Here Are 20 Great Examples. (Plus a Checklist!)

October 15, 2020 by Diana Urban

Writing your author bio can be a daunting task, but a well-crafted bio can help readers learn more about what makes you and your books so interesting. You should regularly maintain your bio on places like your BookBub Author Profile so fans and potential readers seeking you out can learn more about you and why they should pick up your latest book.

Stuck on what to include? While there is no one-size-fits-all formula, here are some examples of author bios we love so you can get some inspiration when crafting your own bio. We’ve also created an Author Biography Checklist with recommendations on what to include, as well as where to keep your author bio up to date online.

Download a printable checklist!

Subscribe to the BookBub Partners Blog to download this checklist as a printable PDF, and keep it handy any time you want to write or update your author bio!

DOWNLOAD NOW

1. Ramona Emerson

Ramona Emerson is a Diné writer and filmmaker originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. She has a bachelor’s in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. After starting in forensic videography, she embarked upon a career as a photographer, writer, and editor. She is an Emmy nominee, a Sundance Native Lab Fellow, a Time-Warner Storyteller Fellow, a Tribeca All-Access Grantee and a WGBH Producer Fellow. In 2020, Emerson was appointed to the Governor’s Council on Film and Media Industries for the State of New Mexico. She currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she and her husband, the producer Kelly Byars, run their production company Reel Indian Pictures. Shutter is her first novel.

Why we love it: Ramona makes a splash as a new author by detailing her extensive experience in both writing and filmmaking. Her background makes an effective setup for her debut novel about a forensic photographer.

2. Courtney Milan

Courtney Milan writes books about carriages, corsets, and smartwatches. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly , Library Journal , and Booklist . She is a New York Times and a USA Today Bestseller. Courtney pens a weekly newsletter about tea, books, and basically anything and everything else. Sign up for it here: https://bit.ly/CourtneysTea Before she started writing romance, Courtney got a graduate degree in theoretical physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. After that, just to shake things up, she went to law school at the University of Michigan and graduated summa cum laude. Then she did a handful of clerkships. She was a law professor for a while. She now writes full-time. Courtney is represented by Kristin Nelson of the Nelson Literary Agency.

Why we love it: Courtney concisely leads with her accolades and bestseller status before diving into more personal information with a witty tone. She also includes a call-to-action for readers to sign up to Weekly Tea, one of her mailing lists.

3. Adam Silvera

Adam Silvera is the number one New York Times bestselling author of More Happy Than Not , History Is All You Left Me , They Both Die at the End , Infinity Son , Infinity Reaper , and—with Becky Albertalli— What If It’s Us . He was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start for his debut. Adam was born and raised in the Bronx. He was a bookseller before shifting to children’s publishing and has worked at a literary development company and a creative writing website for teens and as a book reviewer of children’s and young adult novels. He is tall for no reason and lives in Los Angeles. Visit him online at www.adamsilvera.com .

Why we love it: Adam begins his bio with his bestseller accolades and a list of his popular titles. But we especially love how he also includes his previous experience in children’s literature. It’s a fantastic way an author can craft a unique and credible bio using information besides accolades or bestseller status.

4. Farrah Rochon

USA Today Bestselling author Farrah Rochon hails from a small town just west of New Orleans. She has garnered much acclaim for her Crescent City-set Holmes Brothers series and her Moments in Maplesville small town series. Farrah is a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America and has been nominated for an RT BOOKReviews Reviewers Choice Award. In 2015, she received the Emma Award for Author of the Year. When she is not writing in her favorite coffee shop, Farrah spends most of her time reading, cooking, traveling the world, visiting Walt Disney World, and catching her favorite Broadway shows. An admitted sports fanatic, she feeds her addiction to football by watching New Orleans Saints games on Sunday afternoons. Keep in touch with Farrah via the web: Website: https://www.farrahrochon.com/ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/farrahrochonauthor Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/FarrahRochon Instagram: https://instagram.com/farrahrochon/ Newsletter: http://bit.ly/2povjuZ Join my online Fan Club, the Rochonettes! https://www.facebook.com/groups/FarrahRochon/ Farrah’s Books In Order: The Holmes Brothers Deliver Me (Mar. 2007) Release Me (May 2008) Rescue Me (Jan. 2009) Chase Me (Jan. 2017) Trust Me (May 2017) Awaken Me (Jan. 2018) Cherish Me (Jun. 2018) Return To Me (Aug. 2019) New York Sabers Huddle With Me Tonight (Sept. 2010) I’ll Catch You (Mar. 2011) Field of Pleasure (Sept. 2011) Pleasure Rush (Mar. 2012) Bayou Dreams A Forever Kind of Love (Aug. 2012) Always and Forever (Jan. 2013) Yours Forever (Mar. 2014) Forever’s Promise (Apr. 2014) Forever With You (Feb. 2015) Stay With Me Forever (Aug. 2015) Moments in Maplesville A Perfect Holiday Fling (Nov. 2012) A Little Bit Naughty (Mar. 2013) Just A Little Taste (Jan. 2014) I Dare You! (Nov. 2014) All You Can Handle (June 2015) Any Way You Want It (Feb. 2016) Any Time You Need Me (June 2016) Standalones In Her Wildest Dreams (Jan. 2012) The Rebound Guy (July 2012) Delectable Desire (Apr. 2013) Runaway Attraction (Nov. 2013) A Mistletoe Affari (Nov. 2014) Passion’s Song (Feb. 2016) Mr. Right Next Door (Sept. 2016) Anthologies A Change of Heart (The Holiday Inn Anthology – Sept. 2008) No Ordinary Gift (Holiday Brides Anthology – Oct. 2009) Holiday Spice (Holiday Temptation Anthology – Sept. 2016) Christmas Kisses (Reissue–Contains Tuscan Nights and Second-Chance Christmas previously published by Harlequin Kimani

Why we love it: Farrah packs a lot of information into that first paragraph, elegantly describing the awards she’s received and has been nominated for. We also love how she makes it easy for readers to find her on whichever social media platform they prefer and to discover which book to start with for each series.

5. Angie Fox

New York Times bestselling author Angie Fox writes sweet, fun, action-packed mysteries. Her characters are clever and fearless, but in real life, Angie is afraid of basements, bees, and going up stairs when it is dark behind her. Let’s face it. Angie wouldn’t last five minutes in one of her books. Angie is best known for her Southern Ghost Hunter mysteries and for her Accidental Demon Slayer books. Visit her at www.angiefox.com

Why we love it: We love how Angie distinguishes herself from her characters, making herself relatable to readers. She also mentions her bestseller status and best-known works in a humble way.

6. Tiffany D. Jackson

Tiffany D. Jackson is the critically acclaimed author of Allegedly , Monday’s Not Coming , and Let Me Hear a Rhyme . A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book and Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, she received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University, earned her master of arts in media studies from the New School, and has over a decade in TV and film experience. The Brooklyn native still resides in the borough she loves. You can visit her at www.writeinbk.com .

Why we love it: This is an excellent example of a short, concise bio — a perfect snippet for journalists, bloggers, or event coordinators who need to grab Tiffany’s bio for their article or programming.

7. Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is the New York Times Bestselling author of 32 books, including The Undefeated ; How to Read a Book ; Solo ; Swing ; Rebound , which was shortlisted for prestigious Carnegie Medal; and his Newbery medal-winning middle grade novel, The Crossover . He’s also the founding editor of Versify, an imprint that aims to Change the World One Word at a Time. Visit him at KwameAlexander.com

Why we love it: We adore how Kwame calls out his aim to “change the world one word at a time” along with a handful of his best-known books. Short and sweet!

8. Glynnis Campbell

For deals, steals, and new releases from Glynnis, click FOLLOW on this BookBub page! Glynnis Campbell is a USA Today bestselling author of over two dozen swashbuckling action-adventure historical romances, mostly set in Scotland, and a charter member of The Jewels of Historical Romance — 12 internationally beloved authors. She’s the wife of a rock star and the mother of two young adults, but she’s also been a ballerina, a typographer, a film composer, a piano player, a singer in an all-girl rock band, and a voice in those violent video games you won’t let your kids play. Doing her best writing on cruise ships, in Scottish castles, on her husband’s tour bus, and at home in her sunny southern California garden, Glynnis loves to play medieval matchmaker… transporting readers to a place where the bold heroes have endearing flaws, the women are stronger than they look, the land is lush and untamed, and chivalry is alive and well! Want a FREE BOOK? Sign up for her newsletter at https://www.glynnis.net Tag along on her latest adventures here: Website: https://www.glynnis.net Facebook: bit.ly/GCReadersClan Goodreads: bit.ly/GlynnisGoodreads Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GlynnisCampbell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GlynnisCampbell Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/GlynnisCampbell BOOK LIST: The Warrior Maids of Rivenloch: THE SHIPWRECK A YULETIDE KISS LADY DANGER CAPTIVE HEART KNIGHT’S PRIZE The Warrior Daughters of Rivenloch: THE STORMING A RIVENLOCH CHRISTMAS BRIDE OF FIRE BRIDE OF ICE BRIDE OF MIST The Knights of de Ware: THE HANDFASTING MY CHAMPION MY WARRIOR MY HERO Medieval Outlaws: THE REIVER DANGER’S KISS PASSION’S EXILE DESIRE’S RANSOM Scottish Lasses: THE OUTCAST MacFARLAND’S LASS MacADAM’S LASS MacKENZIE’S LASS California Legends: THE STOWAWAY NATIVE GOLD NATIVE WOLF NATIVE HAWK

Why we love it: Like other authors, Glynnis leads with her bestseller status, but not before making sure readers know to follow her on BookBub! We like how her personality shines through in her all-caps calls to action and that she includes the characteristics of her books in a fun way so readers will know what to expect from her work.

9. Laurelin Paige

Laurelin Paige is the NY Times , Wall Street Journal , and USA Today bestselling author of the Fixed Trilogy . She’s a sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there’s kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn’t seem to complain, however. When she isn’t reading or writing sexy stories, she’s probably singing, watching edgy black comedy on Netflix or dreaming of Michael Fassbender. She’s also a proud member of Mensa International though she doesn’t do anything with the organization except use it as material for her bio. You can connect with Laurelin on Facebook at facebook.com/LaurelinPaige or on twitter @laurelinpaige. You can also visit her website, laurelinpaige.com , to sign up for emails about new releases. Subscribers also receive a free book from a different bestselling author every month.

Why we love it: We love Laurelin’s bio because she lets her fun personality shine through! She also includes information about a monthly giveaway she runs through her mailing list, which is enticing and unique.

10. Mia Sosa

Mia Sosa is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and romantic comedies. Her books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly , Kirkus Reviews , Booklist , and Library Journal , and have been praised by Cosmopolitan , The Washington Post , Buzzfeed , Entertainment Weekly , and more. Book Riot included her debut, Unbuttoning the CEO , in its list of 100 Must-Read Romantic Comedies, and Booklist recently called her “the new go-to author for fans of sassy and sexy contemporary romances.” A former First Amendment and media lawyer, Mia practiced for more than a decade before trading her suits for loungewear (okay, okay, they’re sweatpants). Now she strives to write fun and flirty stories about imperfect characters finding their perfect match. Mia lives in Maryland with her husband, their two daughters, and an adorable dog that rules them all. For more information about Mia and her books, visit www.miasosa.com .

Why we love it: This is such a well-constructed bio, with a paragraph for each (1) listing accolades and praise from trade reviews, (2) including a blurb about Mia’s overall author brand, (3) describing her previous work experience and how she became an author, and (4) sharing personal information and directing readers to where they could learn more.

11. Aiden Thomas

Aiden Thomas is a trans, Latinx, New York Times Bestselling Author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Originally from Oakland, California, they now make their home in Portland, OR. Aiden is notorious for not being able to guess the endings of books and movies, and organizes their bookshelves by color. Their books include Cemetery Boys and Lost in the Never Woods .

Why we love it: A well-known advocate of diverse books, Aiden leads with their identity markers to connect right away with readers of similar identities. The rest of their concise bio fits information about their bestseller status, education, location, personality, and popular titles into just a few short sentences!

12. Wayne Stinnett

Wayne Stinnett is an American novelist and Veteran of the United States Marine Corps. Between those careers, he’s worked as a deckhand, commercial fisherman, divemaster, taxi driver, construction manager, and over the road truck driver, among many other things. He now lives on a sea island, in the South Carolina Lowcountry, with his wife and youngest daughter. They also have three grown children, five grand children, three dogs and a whole flock of parakeets. Stinnett grew up in Melbourne, Florida and has also lived in the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and Cozumel, Mexico. His next dream is to one day visit and dive Cuba.

Why we love it: What better way to introduce an author of novels about travel, seafaring, and military adventures than to share his first-hand experiences! By weaving in relevant professional background and a glimpse of his home life by the sea, Wayne demonstrates deep knowledge of his subjects to his readers, as well as connecting with them on a personal level by describing his family and goals for the future.

13. June Hur

June Hur was born in South Korea and raised in Canada, except for the time when she moved back to Korea and attended high school there. She studied History and Literature at the University of Toronto. She began writing her debut novel after obsessing over books about Joseon Korea. When she’s not writing, she can be found wandering through nature or journaling at a coffee shop. June is the bestselling author of The Silence of Bones , The Forest of Stolen Girls , and The Red Palace , and currently lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter.

Why we love it: We love how June includes her background and what inspired her writing. Sharing a story’s origins is a wonderful way to meaningfully connect with readers.

14. Claire Delacroix

Bestselling author Claire Delacroix published her first medieval romance in 1993. Since then, she has published over seventy romance novels and numerous novellas, including time travel romances, contemporary romances and paranormal romances. The Beauty , part of her successful Bride Quest series, was her first book to land on the New York Times list of bestselling books. Claire has written under the name Claire Cross and continues to write as Deborah Cooke as well as Claire Delacroix. Claire makes her home in Canada with her family, a large undisciplined garden and a growing number of incomplete knitting projects. Sign up for Claire’s monthly medieval romance newsletter at: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/622ca9849b7136a9e313df83 Visit Claire’s website to find out more about her books at http://delacroix.net

Why we love it: While Claire has an extensive backlist, she succinctly describes her publishing success and subgenres. She also includes all of her pen names so readers can easily find her, no matter which name they’re looking for.

15. Vanessa Riley

Vanessa Riley writes Historical Fiction and Historical Romance (Georgian, Regency, & Victorian) featuring hidden histories, dazzling multi-culture communities, and strong sisterhoods. She promises to pull heart strings, offer a few laughs, and share tidbits of tantalizing history. This Southern, Irish, Trini (West Indies) girl holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering and a MS in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University. She also earned a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Penn State University. Yet, her love of history and lattes have overwhelmed her passion for math, leading to the publication of over 20+ titles. She loves writing on her southern porch with proper caffeine.

Why we love it: Vanessa launches into her bio by sharing the specific time periods she writes in, as well as the diverse characters and emotions her readers can look forward to, appealing directly to her ideal audience . She then shares a bit of personal info, leaving readers with an image of her in her element: writing on a porch while sipping tea.

16. April White

April White has been a film producer, private investigator, bouncer, teacher and screenwriter. She has climbed in the Himalayas, survived a shipwreck, and lived on a gold mine in the Yukon. She and her husband share their home in Southern California with two extraordinary boys and a lifetime collection of books. Her first novel, Marking Time , is the 2016 winner of the Library Journal Indie E-Book Award for YA Literature, and her contemporary romantic suspense, Code of Conduct , was a Next Generation Indie Award and RONE Award Finalist. All five books in the Immortal Descendants series are on the Amazon Top 100 lists in Time Travel Romance and Historical Fantasy. More information and her blog can be found at www.aprilwhitebooks.com .

Why we love it: April’s bio is short and sweet, but is packed with interesting information. She was a private investigator and survived a shipwreck? How can you not want to learn more about this author? She also elegantly includes her books’ status and subgenre in the last paragraph, along with a call-to-action for readers to learn more.

17. Julia Quinn

#1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn loves to dispel the myth that smart women don’t read (or write) romance, and if you watch reruns of the game show The Weakest Link you might just catch her winning the $79,000 jackpot. She displayed a decided lack of knowledge about baseball, country music, and plush toys, but she is proud to say that she aced all things British and literary, answered all of her history and geography questions correctly, and knew that there was a Da Vinci long before there was a code. On December 25, 2020, Netflix premiered Bridgerton , based on her popular series of novels about the Bridgerton family. Find her on the web at www.juliaquinn.com .

Why we love it: Julia takes a unique approach, making her bio more voicey and focused on her interests. Yet she keeps it up to date, including her latest news in the last sentence (above the call-to-action).

18. Rick Mofina

USA Today bestselling author Rick Mofina is a former journalist who has interviewed murderers on death row, flown over L.A. with the LAPD and patrolled with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police near the Arctic. He’s also reported from the Caribbean, Africa and Kuwait’s border with Iraq. His books have been published in nearly 30 countries, including an illegal translation produced in Iran. His work has been praised by James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Jeffery Deaver, Sandra Brown, James Rollins, Brad Thor, Nick Stone, David Morrell, Allison Brennan, Heather Graham, Linwood Barclay, Peter Robinson, Håkan Nesser and Kay Hooper. The Crime Writers of Canada, The International Thriller Writers and The Private Eye Writers of America have listed his titles among the best in crime fiction. As a two-time winner of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, a four-time Thriller Award finalist and a two-time Shamus Award finalist, the Library Journal calls him, “One of the best thriller writers in the business.” Join Rick Mofina’s newsletter from his website and receive a free eBook! You can also find Rick Mofina’s new exclusive serialized thriller, The Dying Light , by subscribing to Radish Fiction com For more information please visit www.rickmofina.com https://www.facebook.com/rickmofina or follow Rick on Twitter @Rick Mofina

Why we love it: Including Rick’s first-hand experiences as a journalist lends him credibility in his genres of Crime Fiction and Thrillers. He also includes a list of well-known authors who have praised his work, and these endorsements may encourage those authors’ fans to give Rick a try. The free ebook offer effectively sweetens the deal!

19. J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of the literary TV show A Word on Words . She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, been optioned for television, and has been published in 28 countries. J.T. lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

Why we love it: This is a great example of a concise bio suitable for use in any blog or publication. J.T. keeps to just the essential ingredients of a professional author bio: accolades, genres, experience, and a bit of what she’s up to today for a personal touch.

20. James S.A. Corey

James S.A. Corey is the pen name for a collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. James is Daniel’s middle name, Corey is Ty’s middle name, and S.A. are Daniel’s daughter’s initials. James’ current project is a series of science fiction novels called The Expanse Series. They are also the authors of Honor Among Thieves: Star Wars (Empire and Rebellion).

Why we love it: We love co-author bios that reveal how the duo came up with their pseudonym as a fun fact for readers! We also like that the reminder of this bio simply points readers straight to their buzziest works.

Want to share this post? Here are ready-made tweets:

Click to tweet: If you’re writing your author bio, these examples are so helpful! #writetip #pubtip http://bit.ly/1OSBcDO

Click to tweet: Make sure to keep your author bio updated! Here are some great bio examples, PLUS a printable checklist of what to include and where to keep it up to date. #amwriting http://bit.ly/1OSBcDO

This post was originally published on October 15 2015 and has been updated with new examples and a PDF checklist!

Free: The Ultimate Collection of Book Marketing Examples

Subscribe to the BookBub Partners Blog to get your free flipbook right away. You'll also get BookBub’s latest book marketing tips and insights delivered to your inbox each week.

About Diana Urban

Related posts.

• Featured Deals
• BookBub Ads
• Author Profiles
• Book Marketing Ideas
• Self-Pub Tips

• For the Press
• Privacy & Terms
• What is BookBub?
• In the News
• Free Ebooks
• Invite Your Friends

Publishers & Authors

• Partners Overview
• Submit New Deal
• Partner Dashboard
• Claim an Author Profile
• Partner FAQ

© 2021 BookBub. All rights reserved.

Become a Bestseller

Follow our 5-step publishing path.

Fundantals of Fiction & Story

Bring your story to life with a proven plan.

Market Your Book

Learn how to sell more copies.

Edit Your Book

Get professional editing support.

Author Advantage Accelerator Nonfiction

Grow your business, authority, and income.

Author Advantage Accelerator Fiction

Become a full-time fiction author.

Author Accelerator Elite

Take the fast-track to publishing success.

Take the Quiz

Let us pair you with the right fit.

Free Copy of Published.

Book title generator, nonfiction outline template, writing software quiz, book royalties calculator.

Learn how to write your book

Learn how to edit your book

Learn how to self-publish your book

Learn how to sell more books

Learn how to grow your business

Learn about self-help books

Learn about nonfiction writing

Learn about fiction writing

How to Get An ISBN Number

A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing

How Much Do Self-Published Authors Make on Amazon?

Book Template: 9 Free Layouts

How to Write a Book in 12 Steps

The 15 Best Book Writing Software Tools

How to Write a Biography: 10 Step Guide + Book Template

POSTED ON Nov 14, 2023

Written by Nicole Ahlering

So you’d like to know how to write a biography. We can help with that! In this guide, we show you how to get from the initial book idea to publishing your book , and we throw in a free template to help you on your way. 

Let’s jump right in. 

This guide teaches you how to write a biography in the following steps:

Get Our 6″ x 9″ Pre-Formatted Book Template for Word or Mac

We will send you a Book Template for US Trade (standard paperback size).

Step 1: Read other biographies 

Austin Kleon, Author of Steal Like an Artist , says “the writer tries to master words. All of these pursuits involve the study of those who have come before and the effort to build upon their work in some way.”

In other words, to be a great writer, you need to read the best biographies written by other excellent authors!

In this case, it would behoove you to read several biographies – whether historical or celebrity biographies is up to you and your sub-genre. 

A good author to start with? Walter Isaacson . He’s written highly acclaimed biographies on everyone from Abraham Lincoln and Steve Jobs to Leonardo Da Vinci and Elon Musk. 

Step 2: Identify your subject

Next, it’s time to choose who you’d like to write about – if you don’t already have someone in mind.  

The most important factor will be, of course, your interest in the person you’re planning to write about. You’ll spend months (or even years) deep-diving into this person’s history, so you want to choose someone who you’re unlikely to tire of. 

Here are a few other factors to consider: 

• How impactful has your potential subject’s life been? In other words, will people care to learn more about this person? 
• How readily available is information about your potential subject? Biographies require extensive research, so it’s critical to choose someone who has enough information out there to dig into! Consider whether your subject has done interviews, written journals, has family or a partner willing to speak with you, and more. 
• Are there already books written about your potential subject? Just because there’s an existing biography about the person you’re interested in doesn’t (necessarily) mean you can’t write another one. But if there are two or three biographies, you may want to reconsider. If you do choose to write about someone who has already been well-documented, be mindful about approaching the topic with a new angle or perspective. For instance, there are several biographies about George Washington, but author Alexis Coe wrote one about how Washington isn’t “quite the man we remember.” This brilliant iteration has over 12,000 ratings on Goodreads .
• Is there a market demand for a book about your potential subject? If you’d like to publish your book, you need to be mindful of whether folks will want to read it. Do some research to determine if readers will be receptive to a book about the person you’re interested in. 

Related: Is a Biography a Primary Source?

Step 3: Get permission to write about your subject

We’ll start by stating the obvious. It’s a good idea to get permission to write about your subject, even if you’re not legally required to. For one thing, it’s just good manners. Plus, you’re much more likely to get unfettered access to the information and sources you need to write your book. 

But do you have to get permission? It depends.

In some cases, if your subject is considered a “public figure,” permission may not be required. The definition of a public figure varies depending on your jurisdiction, so you should always consult a lawyer before writing a biography. 

If you do decide to proceed without permission, be mindful of how your book will be received and any legal issues that may arise. 

Related : Difference Between A Memoir and Biography

Step 4: Create an outline

It’s critical to outline your biography before you begin writing it. Among other things, it helps ensure you cover every topic you’d like to and get the book in the correct chronological order. It also helps you identify themes that emerge as you organize your ideas. 

Need help creating your outline? Learn how to do it (and take advantage of free templates!) in our guide to outlining a book . 

Step 5: Select a working title (using a title generator) 

Now is the fun part! It’s time to create a working title for your book. A working title is just what it sounds like: it’s a title that works – for now. 

Of course, it’s helpful to have something to call the book as you’re working on it. And it encourages you to think about the message you’d like your book to convey. When your biography is complete, you can always do a little more research on how to write book titles for your specific sub-genre and update your working title accordingly.

Or, you can decide you still love your initial title and publish your book with that one! 

We’ve made it easy for you to develop a working title – or multiple – using our book title generator . 

Don't like it?

Step 6: Write a rough draft 

Okay, now it’s time to start writing your rough draft. Don’t be intimidated; just focus on getting something down on the page. As experts on all things writing and self-publishing, we’ve got a rough draft writing guide to help you get through this phase of writing a biography.

Remember to be as balanced and objective as possible.

Make good use of your primary and secondary sources, and double-check all of your facts. You’ve got this!  

Step 7: Self-edit

There are several different types of editing that we recommend each manuscript undergo. But before you give your rough draft to anyone else to review, you should edit it yourself. 

The first step to self-editing?

Take a break! It’s essential to give your mind some time to recuperate before you go over your work. And never self-edit as you go!

After you’ve completed your break, here are a few things to consider as you edit: 

• Grammar. This one is self-explanatory and usually the easiest. You can use an AI editor to make a first pass and quickly catch obvious spelling errors. Depending on prompts and your experience with the tool, you can also use AI to catch some grammar and syntax issues as well.
• Content and structure . This is the time to make sure the bones of your piece are good. Make sure your content flows logically (and in chronological order), no important pieces of information are missing, and there isn’t redundant or unhelpful information. 
• Clarity and consistency. Keep an eye out for any confusing copy and ensure your tone is uniform throughout the book.
• Try reading your draft aloud. You’d be surprised at how many errors, shifts in tone, or other things you’d like to change that you don’t notice while reading in your head. Go ahead and do a read-through of your draft out loud. 

Step 8: Work with an editor

Once you’ve created the best draft you can, it’s time to hire an editor. As we mentioned, there are multiple types of book editing, so you’ll need to choose the one(s) that are best for you and your project. 

For instance, you can work with a developmental editor who helps with big-picture stuff. Think book structure, organization, and overall storytelling. Or you might work with a line editor who focuses on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the like. 

There are also specialized copy editors, content editors, fact-checkers, and more.

It’s in your best interest to do a substantial amount of research before choosing an editor since they’ll have a large impact on your book. Many editors are open to doing a paid trial so you can see their work before you sign them on for the entire book. 

Step 9: Hire a book cover designer + get an ISBN 

Once you’ve worked with your editor(s) to finalize your book, it’s time to get your book ready to go out into the world. Your first step is to hire a book cover designer to create a cover that grabs readers’ attention (pssst: did you know that all SelfPublishing authors get done-for-you professional book design? Ask us about it !).

Then, you’ll need to get an ISBN number for your book – or an International Standard Book Number. It’s a unique way to identify your book and is critical for ordering, inventory tracking, and more. 

Bear in mind that each rendition of your book – regardless of when you publish them – will need their own ISBN numbers. So if you initially publish as a softcover and hardcover book and then decide to publish an ebook with the same exact content, you'll need 3 total ISBN numbers.

To get an ISBN, head to ISBN.org and follow the steps they provide.  Or reference our guide right here for step-by-step instructions (complete with photos) on how to get an ISBN number for self-published books.

Step 10: Create a launch plan 

Now is the most exciting part. It’s time to get your book out into the world! You’ll need to map out your plan, schedule events , finalize your pricing strategy, and more. 

We have an entire guide to launching a book to help you figure it out. 

Get your free book template!

Learning how to write a biography can be challenging, but when you have a clear plan and guidance, the process is much easier. We've helped thousands of aspiring authors just like you write and self-publish their own books. We know what works – and how to become a successfully published author faster.

Take the first step today and down the book template below!

And, if you need additional help writing your biography, remember that we’re standing by to help. Just schedule a book consultation and one of our team members will help answer any of your questions about the writing process.

FREE BOOK OUTLINE TEMPLATE

100% Customizable For Your Manuscript.

Related posts

Business, Non-Fiction

How to Get More Patients With a Book & Brand

Non-Fiction

The Only (FREE) Autobiography Template You Need – 4 Simple Steps

The 55 best biographies of all time.

Kindlepreneur

Book Marketing for Self-Publishing Authors

Home / Book Publishing / How to Write an Author Bio [With Examples and Templates]

How to Write an Author Bio [With Examples and Templates]

To write a great author bio, you need to know your target audience, cater to your genre, brag (but not too much), keep it brief, and call the reader to action.

When you’re self-publishing on Amazon , you need to put some serious thought into the author bio on your Amazon book page. Don’t haphazardly throw together some sentences and hit the publish button.

The author bio isn’t your most important tool. (The most essential tools are the book reviews , book cover , and synopsis/blurb .) But the author bio is another critical tool that you shouldn’t leave out.

Can I just leave my author bio out? No, you cannot just leave out your author bio, even if you wrote a short story or novella. It looks unprofessional, scares away potential readers, foregoes an opportunity to connect with your target audience, and leads to fewer book sales.

Plus, writing a good author bio doesn’t take that long.

If you’re not Grisham, or Godin, or Ferriss, or Fleming, very few people will buy a novel by you purely based on name recognition. So put a little work into your bio, and you won’t regret it.

Note: The Author Bio is just one of many parts of a book. I have a whole series of posts on the subject, and I highly recommend you check those out as well!

• What is an author bio?
• Examples of phenomenal author bios
• Tips on making a persuasive, engaging author bio
• How to add the bio to your book page
• An author bio template checklist

Table of contents

• What should an author's bio include?
• Is an author bio actually important?
• What’s your book about?
• Who are you writing for?
• 4 Writing Tips For Creating an Author Bio:
• Step 3: Add the Bio to Your Book Page
• Podcast Episode: The Perfect Picture For Your Author Bio
• 6 Examples of Phenomenal Author Bios
• Can you hire a freelancer to write your author bio?
• How to Write a Bio for Your Author Website
• Author Bio Template
• Where does your author bio go?
• How often should you update your “About the Author” page?

For clarification, on Amazon, there are 2 kinds of bio:

• The generic bio on your “ Author Page ”
• Separate bios for each of your books

The advice in this post is aimed at your bio on your individual book pages, although much of it will still be relevant to your main Author Page.

Why Should You Trust Me?

I've actually been writing and formatting books for a long time. Over 10 years so far, and counting.

But that's not the real reason, because there are plenty of authors who have lots of experience, but know next to nothing about the different parts of a book, or book formatting in general.

The real reason you should trust me is because I actually created my own formatting software that solved all my problems. I called it Atticus.

But this isn't meant to be a sales pitch. I just want to make sure it's clear that I know what I'm talking about. The amount of research that went into not only formatting my own books, but also creating a formatting software is huge.

I researched everything, which led me to learn all about every. single. part. of. a. book. And there were a lot more than I realized.

And of course, that includes the Author Bio.

So if all that makes sense, hopefully you'll come along with me as show you everything I've learned.

Also called “About the Author,” an author bio is:

• A paragraph about you as a writer
• Your credentials
• Your interests
• A call to action
• Other relevant information you want to share with your target audience

An author biography is your chance to connect with readers beyond just a byline.

Everyone needs a stellar front cover design, an attention-grabbing book title , and a sophisticated keyword strategy . But those book marketing musts simply draw users to see your book’s product page.

A good author bio (and book reviews and book description ) compels them to actually buy the book.

The author bio establishes you as the kind of writer whom your target market ought to read. It’s where you forge a connection with potential readers and get them to trust you. Readers should want to know what you have to say based on your author bio.

If you take the author bio seriously and get it right, you’ll sell more books.

You should include your name, relevant accomplishments, and a call to action in your author’s bio. Aim for a bio of 60-90 words in length.

If your book is humorous, inject humor. If your book is melodramatic, add a little melodrama. Tailor your bio to your genre, target audience, and the individual book it’s for.

If possible, include links to your website or social media , so people can find out more about you.

Include a picture when possible. This picture should be a professional headshot of you smiling or looking serious, depending on your genre. Do not skimp on the headshot. An unprofessional author headshot screams low-quality content.

Yes, a good author bio is actually important because:

• It builds credibility
• It affirms whether what you have to say is worth reading
• It tells your target audience that you have written a book for them
• Readers may relate to your personal story
• You will sell more books

“No one reads the author bio,” I hear you say. But you’re wrong. While not everyone cares about the author’s bio, some care a lot.

First of all, unless you’re a household name, you must build credibility with the reader. If a reader doesn’t think you’re credible, they will read your book with a cynical eye and judge every mistake they find. Or worse, they won’t buy your book in the first place.

Second of all, more than ever, consumers are buying books from writers they want to support. If someone learns more about and relates to the author, they are much more likely to buy.

Increase Your Book Marketing

See the Publisher Rocket effect, when you use the right keywords and categories to help get your book seen more on Amazon.

How to Write a Powerful Author Bio for Your Book

Here are 3 steps to write an awesome author bio (About the Author) and upload it onto Amazon:

• Figure out your genre and target audience
• Write the bio
• Add the bio to your book page

How do you write a bio for a first-time author? First-time authors might not be able to include any literary accomplishments, like other best-selling books and prestigious awards. But first-time writers can include relevant expertise that pertains to your book. Also, any author can inject personality and a call to action, no matter if this is their first book.

Step 1 : Figure Out Your Genre and Target Audience

Answer these 2 crucial questions to understand your genre and target audience:

Your author bio needs to compliment the genre and subject matter of your book. Bios irrelevant to the book confuse potential readers.

While this may seem like obvious advice, a lot of irrelevant content finds its way into many author bios. Consider:

• If your nightmare-inducing horror novel contains a perky and cheerful author description about your love for puppies and former career as a glassblower, you forfeit an opportunity to connect readers with your writing.
• If your middle-grade comedy has an author bio that reads like a middle school textbook , your audience may be confused whether you’re able to write comedy.
• If your book is a contemporary romance novel with a middle-aged female protagonist, your author bio’s personality and content should relate to the right target audience.
• If you’re writing about tax-deduction strategies for real estate investors, your bio should present your expertise — why anyone should listen to you on the subject.
• If your book is a spiritual guide to personal growth, some life-affirming positivity will improve your bio.

You need to think about your target reader. Hopefully, you had a type of reader in mind when writing the book . You always need to know who would want to buy and read your book.

Figure out your target reader, then write your author bio for that person.

For non-fiction authors, your ideal reader probably wants to read your credentials, your life experience, and what qualifies you to speak on a particular topic.

For fiction writers, your ideal reader may be looking for a unique, exciting personality to come out through the bio. You may briefly include credibility-building credentials, such as if you earned an MFA in Creative Writing.

In many cases, creating an “avatar” of your customer — with a name, location, and personality — is a valuable way to both develop your author bio and strategically target your book marketing efforts. Check out this guide on how to create a customer avatar.

Don’t add information “just in case” a different kind of reader might appreciate it. You end up with a behemoth of a bio that no one reads because it’s too daunting and unfocused.

Step 2 : Write the Bio

Now you need to write the actual words of the bio. Stick to this checklist on how to write an author bio:

• Begin with a punchy, impactful first sentence.
• Introduce your area of expertise or your unique personality, depending on the genre.
• Build credibility without overly bragging.
• Add a personal touch, such as a relatable profession or quirky hobby.
• Finish on a call to action (check out the new book, follow you on social media, etc.).

While you’re writing, always ask yourself, “Is this relevant to my reader?”

Most readers won’t care where you were born (unless it’s a book about where you live), what high school you went to, or that you always wanted to become a full-time writer.

This isn’t to say that your bio should be impersonal. On the contrary! This is your opportunity to make readers feel like they know you. Your personality and/or expertise should make them want to read what you wrote.

• Write in the third person. “About the author” demands the third person. While it may feel a bit weird to write “he” or “she” rather than “I” in the first person, there’s one significant benefit: Your relevant accomplishments and accolades will sound far less boastful.
• Don’t brag too much . Don't go overboard showing off because everyone knows you wrote it. Even if the author bio is in the third person, state your achievements, but don’t become a braggart. Sprinkle in a bit of humility and modesty as well.
• Keep your author bio short. The faster they can read about you, the faster they can buy your book. Aim for 60-90 words and don’t go above 150. It takes effort and practice to distill everything into such a short space. Once you’ve nailed it, you can fit a great deal of personality and information into those 60-90 words.
• Use the bio like a business card . Give readers a way to interact with you by adding your website or social media info. At the very least, they’ll be able to find out more about you and explore your other works. Adding this info at the end is the most common call to action in author bios.

Step 3 : Add the Bio to Your Book Page

You can add your author bio to your Amazon book page by visiting Amazon Author Central , select your book, and add it in the “About the Author” section.

You can add the “About the Author” page into your back matter for a physical book. On most word processors like Scrivener or Vellum, you should be able to generate the author bio into your print-ready file.

But one really annoying bit about adding an author bio to most books is that you have to copy and paste it for every book. This gets cumbersome when you have ten books and need to make one tiny change in each of them.

Unfortunately, most programs like Vellum and Scrivener do not have a way to do “templates” where you update a single Author Bio page, and it gets updated across all your books.

But Atticus can.

In Atticus you can save as a template and then reuse that template wherever you want. And the best part is, if you change the template, it will change it for all your books. Check it out!

Here are some real-life author bios from Amazon or on a back cover that combine most or all of the tips above:

Forgotten Legacy : Robin Perini, the Publisher’s Weekly and internationally bestselling author of Forgotten Secrets, is devoted to giving her readers fast-paced, high-stakes adventures with a love story sure to melt their hearts. A RITA Award finalist and winner of the prestigious Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award in 2011, she is also a nationally acclaimed writing instructor. By day, she’s an analyst for an advanced technology corporation, but in honor of her mother, Robin has become a passionate advocate for those who battle Alzheimer’s disease. She loves to hear from readers. Visit her web­site at www.robinperini.com.

[Length: 97 words]

D a mn Delicious Meal Prep: 115 Easy Recipes for Low-Calories, High-Energy Living : Chungah Rhee is the founder, recipe developer, and photographer of Damn Delicious. What began as a grad school hobby is now a top food blog, with millions of readers coming to her site for easy weeknight recipes and simplified gourmet meals. She lives and continues to cook non-stop in Los Angeles, with her corgi, Butters. Her first cookbook was published in 2016 by Oxmoor House. Visit her at damndelicious.net.

[Length: 70 words]

Long Range Shooting Handbook: Complete Beginner's Guide to Long Range Shooting : “Ryan Cleckner served as a special operations sniper team leader with the U.S. Army's elite 1st Ranger Bn. on multiple combat deployments. He is a graduate of the premier Special Operations Target Interdiction Course (SOTIC), among other military training courses, and has taught snipers and police sharpshooters from around the world. Ryan has a series of online instructional videos known for their ability to explain complex topics in a simple and digestible way. Ryan is currently a firearms industry professional and an attorney.”

[Length: 83 words]

Diary of a Farting Creeper: Why Does the Creeper Fart When He Should Explode? (Volume 1) : Who is Wimpy Fart? Wimpy Fart loves Minecraft and writes awesome Minecraft books for YOU because you are the best Minecraft fans in the world. You can email Wimpy Fart to tell him about your favorite Minecraft books, or to talk about really loud farts. [email protected] Oh – Wimpy Fart reads all your awesome Amazon reviews and likes to know what you want to read about in Minecraft books!

[Length: 68 words]

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction books for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s a podcaster and an award-winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com has been voted in the Top 100 sites for writers by Writer's Digest.

[Length: 49 words]

John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you’re reading this, makes perfect sense. He’s best known for writing science fiction, including the New York Times bestseller Redshirts, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word “Whatever” into Google. No, seriously, try it.

[Length: 85 words]

If you're looking for author bio perfection, Scalzi’s is as close as you're gonna find. His bio lends himself credibility, demonstrates his personality, and has one of the most unique calls to action you'll ever read. How many of you actually googled “whatever” just now?

Yes, you can hire a freelance writer or a ghostwriter to write your author bio to make sure it’s as amazing as it should be. Their creative writing know-how can produce a bio worthy of a good read and help you better connect with your audience if you’re having a hard time with the bio.

Hopefully, because you’re a writer, you’re able to follow the steps in this article to create your own bio. But in many cases, writing about yourself is more challenging than writing any other prose. (No shame, I promise!)

To write an author bio for your website, follow these 8 tips and tricks:

• Determine what your book’s about, and tailor your bio to compliment the style and tone.
• Determine your target audience, and tailor your bio to attract those specific readers.
• Begin your bio with a punchy first sentence.
• Build credibility by demonstrating your accomplishments, but don’t brag too much.
• Add links to relevant interviews (on NPR or PBS, for example), news articles (ever been featured in The Wall Street Journal ?), and Amazon sales pages.
• Finish with a call to action — perhaps a link to your sales page.
• Make sure your word count is 60-90 words.
• When you review it, take out all irrelevant words. Will your target audience care about each word? If not, take that word out.

On an author’s website , you can go into more detail, list more important works or achievements, and link to other pages on your website to find more info.

Also, an author website bio lends itself more to the first-person than a book page bio. Feel free to use first person or third person, as long as you stick to one or the other.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach, but the following checklist provides a structure you can use as an author bio template:

• Add a personal touch, such as a hobby or favorite TV show.
• Finish on a call to action (check out the new book, follow on social media, etc.).

If you browse bestselling author bios, you'll notice they tend to follow this sequence.

The content and tone you include in your author bio will depend on several factors:

• Content and tone of your book
• Genre (or multiple genres)
• Previous works
• Previous achievements
• Personal preference
• Medium (eBook only, literary magazine, etc.)

In a print book, your author bio should go in the back matter of your book or on the dust jacket sleeve.

You should also place an author bio on your website that goes into a little more detail than the bio in your book.

For an eBook on Amazon, your author bio goes below the suggested books. Here are the headings that appear before the “About the Author” section:

You should update your “About the Author” page or individual author bios any time something significant changes in your life or career, especially honors and awards or when your next book comes out.

Publish a new book? Update all your old bios.

Win an award? Update all your old bios.

Featured on a famous talk show? You may want to update all your old bios.

Going through a divorce or other major family issues? If you mention your spouse or now-estranged children in your bio, you may want to change that. (I know that’s dark, but it happens and is worth considering.)

Earn a prestigious honor or academic position? You know what you should do.

I’ll show you mine…

In summary, the steps in this post take you through everything you need when writing your own author bio. Refer to them when you start writing – and you’ll have an engaging author bio that should easily sell more books.

My own author bio is listed just below for reference (and ridicule, if you like).

I don't have to tell you, I'm pretty much a techy goofball. Hopefully, my bio does a great job of conveying just that. Using humor and an upbeat tone, I want to let Kindlepreneur readers know exactly who I am as a content writer in 34 words.

Special thanks to John Scalzi for inspiring me to write this specific type of bio.

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

Related Posts

Amazon advantage vs amazon seller central: sell your own print books, book idea validation mastery: is your book idea a bestseller, the 3 best courses on selling books direct to readers, sell more books on amazon, amazon kindle rankings e-book.

Learn how to rank your Kindle book #1 on Amazon with our collection of time-tested tips and tricks.

67 thoughts on “ How to Write an Author Bio [With Examples and Templates] ”

After one year locked at home because of COVID-19, I decided to have as much fun as I had when teaching at school. That’s how “A Modern Superhero” was born. I enjoy good food, that’s why I need to do some exercise. By the way, run to my social media for some free perks.

Should I or should I not say what my day job is? Yes it has and no it hasn’t to do with my books. As I am an architect, I have well-structured novels! Lol. But is that boring? As I am not a van driver or pizza delivery girl, why would it interest anyone. I don’t know what’s boring anymore. Please help! Thanks.

Depending on your niche or subject, not sure. I’ll guess that you’re writing some sort of fiction. If that is the case, a mention of something that is important to you is fine, but don’t drag it on and focus on it. If you’ve used levity in your writing, then you can say something like “Architect by day, crime novelist by night.”

Comments are closed.

Join the community

Join 111,585 other authors who receive weekly emails from us to help them make more money selling books.

The 20 Best Biographies of Writers

The best biographies of writers cut through the gossip, the scandals, the myths, and the legends to deftly balance the life of the author with their literary legacy. This list features the best literary biographies of writers who penned classic works across more than four hundred years of literary history. From Shakespeare to Richard Wright to Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf, these favorite biographies of writers encompass a deep bench of the best biographies of famous writers. Let’s dive in!

But first, if you’re interested in more of the best literary biographies, be sure to check out our list of the 10 best biographies of poets :

This post contains affiliate links

And now for an epic list of the 20 best biographies of writers…

Agatha christie: an elusive woman by lucy worsley.

Agatha Christie, one of the “Masters of Suspense,” lived a remarkable life while penning classics like Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None . Read all about it in Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman . Among the best literary biographies, this one dispels the mysteries in the real life of this iconic mystery writer.

How to read it: Purchase Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman on Amazon

Also a poet: frank o’hara, my father, and me by ada calhoun.

This unusual literary biography blends personal memoir with a bio of one of the greatest poets of all time, Frank O’Hara (for his collected poems, check out this edition ). In Also a Poet , Ada Calhoun discovers tapes of interviews between Peter Schjeldahl, her father, an art critic, and poet Frank O’Hara. The recordings were intended to be used in Schjeldahl’s unfinished biography of O’Hara. One of the best biographies of writers, Calhoun sets out to complete her father’s book while also intertwining memoirs of her own complicated relationship with her father. The result is a raw and real read you won’t soon forget.

How to read it: Purchase Also a Poet on Amazon

Jane austen: a life by claire tomalin.

Among readers who have favorite biographies of writers, Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A Life often ranks high among the best literary biographies. We all know Jane Austen—author of, among other classics, Pride and Prejudice and Emma —right? Not so fast. Tomalin’s biography uncovers the previously limited life of this incredibly influential writer.

How to read it: Purchase Jane Austen: A Life on Amazon

Begin again: james baldwin’s america and its urgent lessons for our own by eddie s. glaude jr..

The best biographies of writers explore the legacy of the famous author whose portrait they are trying to draw. And that’s exactly what Eddie S. Glaude Jr. does in Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessonsf or Our Own . This bio of James Baldwin, perhaps most famous for his novel with queer themes, Giovanni’s Room , argues that Baldwin’s vision of America remains relevant today.

How to read it: Purchase Begin Again on Amazon

Born to be posthumous: the eccentric life and mysterious genius of edward gorey by mark dery.

I’m a huge Edward Gorey fan. I’ve read his books—some of which are collected in Amphigorey: Fifteen Books —over and over again and count him as an influence on my own writing. So imagine how delightful it was to encounter Born to Be Posthumous , Mark Dery’s compelling portrait of Gorey, definitely one of he best biographies of writers. This engrossing literary biography captures the “eccentric life and mysterious genius” of Gorey in a book that illuminates this exceptional-but-often-overlooked pioneer of the macabre.

How to read it: Purchase Born to Be Posthumous on Amazon

The bradbury chronicles: the life of ray bradbury by sam weller.

I love Ray Bradbury. During a very difficult time in my life, I sought refuge in Bradbury’s imagination, devouring two of his most treasured short story collections, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man (get them both in this Ray Bradbury boxed collection by the Library of America). I was completely swept up in wonder and fascination. So I’m so excited to say that Sam Weller’s The Bradbury Chronicles illuminates the life of this towering figure in America’s literary history, easily one of the best biographies of famous writers. Read this book and learn about the incredible life of one of the most incredible authors ever.

How to read it: Purchase The Bradbury Chronicles on Amazon

The brontë myth by lucasta miller.

One of the best biographies of famous English writers, Lucasta Miller’s The Brontë Myth is a deep dive into the lives and literary works of the Brontë sisters, whom you may know best from Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë). Miller’s bio unfurls the tangled reputation of these three brilliant sisters, liberating them from the various schools of thought—psychoanalytical, feminist, etc.—that have embraced the Brontës and counted them as their own. Instead, we get a fresh update on the lives of these influential sister-authors, free of the various schools of criticism that have ensnared them in their jaws. (If you’re just getting started with the Brontës, check out this handsome box set of their most well-known novels .)

How to read it: Purchase The Brontë Myth on Amazon

Cross of snow: a life of henry wadsworth longfellow by nicholas a. basbanes.

Chances are you’ve heard of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but until now, this iconic 19th century American author has lived a life undiscovered. Read the best of Longfellow’s work before diving into this incredible look at an incredible writer. In Cross of Snow , Nicholas A. Basbanes reveals the life of Longfellow, charting his influences and the writer he influenced himself. This breakthrough study is easily one of the best literary biographies.

How to read it: Purchase Cross of Snow on Amazon

Every love story is a ghost story: a life of david foster wallace by d. t. max.

The turbulent life of David Foster Wallace, author of that infamous classic, Infinite Jest , is demystified in D. T. Max’s Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story , the must-read literary biography of this important America scribe. The best biographies of writers sort through the gossip, the speculation, and the larger-than-life reputations of their subjects, allowing the author’s life to be seen in line with their work without overtaking their literary genius. And that’s exactly what Max manages in one of the best biographies of famous writers.

How to read it: Purchase Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story on Amazon

I am alive and you are dead: a journey into the mind of philip k. dick by emmanuel carrère.

The genius of Philip K. Dick has left us with classic sci-fi works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (inspiration for the SF film Blade Runner ) and A Scanner Darkly . But who was the man behind these important books that helped establish the science fiction genre? You’ll find the answer to that question in Emmanuel Carrère’s I Am Alive and You Are Dead , an essential literary biography for any fan of Dick’s writing. Definitely one of the best biographies of writers, I Am Alive and You Are Dead is subtitled “A journey into the mind of Philip K. Dick,” an apt description of this deep dive into the brain of this key figure in science fiction and literature in general.

How to read it: Purchase I Am Alive and You Are Dead on Amazon

T.s. eliot: an imperfect life by lyndall gordon.

I consider many of T.S. Eliot’s poems to be perfect, not to mention Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , which was illustrated by Edward Gorey (whose bio I included above in this list of the best biographies of writers). But there’s no denying that Eliot lived a, well, complicated life that included anti-Semitism and misogyny. So how do we reconcile the poet’s work with the poet himself? You’ll find out in Lyndall Gordon’s T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life , among the greatest biographies of poets. Gordon takes Eliot on in this unflinching study of Eliot’s life and literature. The best literary biographies face their subject head on, revealing the “imperfect” lives of their subjects, and it’s precisely that approach that makes this book among the most essential biographies of famous English writers.

How to read it: Purchase T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life on Amazon

J.r.r. tolkien: a biography by humphrey carpenter.

Who was the man who wrote The Lord of the Rings , easily the most influential fantasy books ever written? You’ll find out in Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography . This one definitely ranks among the best biographies of writers because of the nimble way Carpenter weaves together the life of Tolkien with his work, offering a master class of how to write literary biographies. Uncover the man from the myth in this close read on the man who penned a fictional universe as vast and complete as our own universe.

How to read it: Purchase J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life on Amazon

Mary shelley by miranda seymour.

She wrote the groundbreaking science fiction novel Frankenstein , but who was the woman behind this classic story? In Miranda Seymour’s Mary Shelley , we discover exactly that. Among the best literary biographies, this book is a saga of the life of Mary Shelley, a life that saw as much sorrow and trauma as joy. In this book, surely one of the must-have biographies of female writers, Seymour sifts through the documents about Shelley’s life to situate famous English author within her historical and cultural context while also surveying how Shelley influenced the canon of English literature.

How to read it: Purchase Mary Shelley on Amazon

Richard wright: the life and times by hazel rowley.

Richard Wright is perhaps best known for his novel Native Son , but the author also contributed many more books and writing to American letters. In this book, Hazel Rowley digs deep into Wright’s exceptional life and magnificent literature to braid the two together. The result is one of the best biographies of writers, one that highlights the important contributions of a leading figure in American literary history.

How to read it: Purchase Richard Wright: The Life and Times on Amazon

Savage beauty: the life of edna st. vincent millay by nancy milford.

The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay positions this influential author as one of the leading poets of twentieth century. And it’s precisely that legacy that Nancy Milford illuminates in Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay . With this fresh perspective on Millay, the midcentury master of verse, readers get one of the best biographies of poets. If all biographies of female writers were this comprehensive and inquisitive, there’d be no time to read anything else, marking this as an exceptional biography. If you’re interested in important female authors, check out this one vibrant, bold life of Millay, and you won’t be disappointed.

How to read it: Purchase Savage Beauty on Amazon

Shirley jackson: a rather haunted life by ruth franklin.

I’m a big fan of Shirley Jackson. I count We Have Always Lived in the Castle among my all-time favorite books. So it’s with great pleasure that I share that Ruth Franklin’s Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life definitely counts as one of the best biographies of writers. This literary biography goes deep into the life of Jackson, and in so doing, you’ll realize why Franklin subtitles this as “a rather haunted life.” Franklin highlights how this iconic writer danced on the edge of the macabre, radicalized the American literary world, and scandalized the public. It’s a book that’s as dishy as it is illuminating, ranking as among the best literary biographies.

How to read: Purchase Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life on Amazon

Updike by adam begley.

John Updike. Just the name of this author conjures up visions of some of the best writing in the English language, like the Rabbit tetralogy and critically acclaimed short stories . How on earth do you begin to assemble the life of this significant author? Somehow Adam Begley manages it in Updike , one of the best biographies of writers. Begley’s bio of Updike meets its match, becoming as innovative and important as its titular subject. The result is a dazzling biography whose story is just as gripping as one of Updike’s novels. You won’t want to pass this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Updike on Amazon

Virginia woolf by hermione lee.

When I was a senior in college, I did an independent study of Virginia Woolf with a great professor. To get ready for the course, I read biographies of Virginia Woolf, including Hermione Lee’s bio that I’m including in this list of the best literary biographies. Lee tackles her larger-than-life subject, Virginia Woolf, known for her Modernist novels like Mrs. Dalloway and, my personal favorite, To the Lighthouse . Lee is more than up to the task, and the result is, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer : “A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh.” If you’re at all curious about Woolf, the Modernists, the Bloomsbury Group, or the history of English literature, pick this one up.

How to read it: Purchase Virginia Woolf on Amazon

Will in the world: how shakespeare became shakespeare by stephen greenblatt.

Any list of the best biographies of famous English writers would be incomplete without a bio of the father of English literature: yep, William Shakespeare. What’s left to say about the Bard, who penned some of the most important writing in the English language ? Turns out, plenty. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Stephen Greenblatt’s masterful biography Will in the World , which attempts to uncover Shakespeare’s origin story. Greenblatt explores Shakespeare’s early life, and the cultural, historical, and artistic forces that explain, so the subtitle says, “How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.” The outcome is Will in the World , a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and part of the curriculum of anyone looking for the best biographies of writers. This literary biography proves it’s still possible to write fresh, surprising, captivating, and engrossing biographies of famous writers. And Will in the World is the ultimate mic-drop, making it the only Shakespeare biography you need.

How to read it: Purchase Will in the World on Amazon

Wrapped in rainbows: the life of zora neale hurston by valerie boyd.

Many people discover Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston through her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , but in the award-winning Wrapped in Rainbows , Valerie Boyd uncovers the writer’s total miraculous output and undeniable influence. This key book is for sure one of the best literary biographies that any student of American literature will want to check out.

How to read it: Purchase Wrapped in Rainbows on Amazon

And there you have it an essential list of the 20 best biographies of writers. which of these best literary biographies will you read first, share this:.

• biographies

You might be interested in

• October 2023 Recommended Reads

Learn How to Read Tea Leaves with the Best Tea Leaf Reading Books

The 30 Best Politics Books of All Time

• Latest posts

Sarah S. Davis is the founder of Broke by Books, a blog about her journey as a schizoaffective disorder bipolar type writer and reader. Sarah's writing about books has appeared on Book Riot, Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, BookRags, PsychCentral, and more. She has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Library and Information Science from Clarion University, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

The Best Books of 2023

• Four Romance Writing Tips from TITANIC

15 Best New Christmas Romance Books for 2023

The 25 Best Fairy Tale and Folklore Books for Adults

The 20 Best Fantasy Books for Teens

Latest from book lists.

Welcome to my roundup of the Best Books of 2023! Wow, can

In this list of the best new Christmas romance books for 2023,

If you want to learn how to read tea leaves, there’s no

The best politics books of all time capture the drama of political

The 20 Best Novels in Verse for Teens

The best novels in verse for teens reflect a diversity of voices,

• Learn How to Write a Biography: A Step-by-Step Guide.
• Self Publishing Guide

Human lives are intricate tapestries woven with experiences, emotions, challenges, and triumphs. Biographies and autobiographies serve as windows into these remarkable stories, offering insight into the lives of individuals who have left their mark on history or those who wish to chronicle their own journeys. 

I n this guide, we will explore the art of writing biographies and autobiographies, delving into the nuances of both genres and providing valuable tips on how to craft compelling narratives.

Understanding Biography and Autobiography

• Biography: Exploring Lives Beyond the Surface A biography is a literary exploration that unveils the intricate layers of a person’s existence, transcending the mere listing of events. It provides a comprehensive account of an individual’s life, offering insights into their achievements, struggles, societal impact, and distinct qualities that define them. These narratives serve as windows into history, allowing readers to traverse time and understand the legacy left by remarkable individuals. Biographies are usually crafted by biographers, individuals skilled in research and storytelling. They undertake a meticulous journey of gathering information from diverse sources, such as historical records, interviews, letters, and secondary literature. The biographer’s role is to curate these fragments of information into a coherent narrative, painting a vivid portrait of the subject. This comprehensive approach lends credibility and depth to the portrayal, enriching the reader’s understanding of the subject’s contributions and character. Example:  Consider the biography of Mahatma Gandhi. A biographer compiling his life story would explore not only his role in India’s fight for independence but also his principles of nonviolence, his experiments with truth, and his impact on the world’s political landscape. By presenting a holistic view of Gandhi’s life, the biography reveals the nuances of his personality, beliefs, and the larger context in which he operated.
• Autobiography: The Intimate Dialogue of Self-Discovery An autobiography is a narrative journey undertaken by the subject themselves—a profound sharing of one’s life experiences, emotions, and reflections. This genre provides readers with an intimate insight into the subject’s psyche, allowing them to witness their life’s trajectory through personal recollections. Autobiographies carry a unique authenticity, as they are composed from the vantage point of the person who lived those moments, providing a firsthand account of their journey. Autobiographies draw from the subject’s reservoir of memories, emotions, and introspections. This self-exploration leads to a narrative that is often more than a linear chronicle; it becomes a tapestry woven with the threads of emotions, thoughts, and personal revelations. By directly communicating with the reader, the autobiographer creates a powerful connection, allowing readers to step into their shoes and experience their story from within. Example:  A notable example of an autobiography is “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. Written during her time in hiding during World War II, the book offers a candid portrayal of Anne’s life, fears, hopes, and dreams. Through her own words, readers gain a deep understanding of the challenges faced by Jews during the Holocaust, as well as the resilience and humanity that Anne exudes even in the face of adversity.

Writing a Biography:

Research: The Foundation of a Compelling Biography Thorough research is the cornerstone of a captivating biography. Delve into reputable sources like books, articles, interviews, and archives to gather a comprehensive view of your subject’s life. By immersing yourself in these materials, you gain insights into their experiences, motivations, and contributions. Scrutinise the historical context to understand the era’s impact on their journey. Successful research forms the bedrock of your biography, enabling you to present an accurate and nuanced portrayal that resonates with readers. It’s through meticulous research that you uncover the hidden stories and connect the dots, allowing the subject’s essence to shine through the pages.

Selecting a Focus: Defining the Narrative Scope Choosing a focal point is essential for a well-structured biography. Decide whether to cover the subject’s entire life or concentrate on specific periods or achievements. This decision shapes the narrative’s trajectory, preventing it from becoming overwhelming or disjointed. A focused approach allows you to delve deeply into pivotal moments, providing a more profound understanding of the subject’s journey. By clarifying the scope, you enable readers to follow a coherent storyline, making it easier for them to engage with the subject’s life in a meaningful way.

Structuring the Biography: Chronology and Themes The organisation of your biography greatly impacts its readability. Structure your work into logical sections or chapters, employing either a chronological or thematic arrangement. Begin with an engaging introduction that captures readers’ attention and provides essential context. A chronological structure follows the subject’s life in sequential order, offering a clear timeline of events. Alternatively, a thematic structure groups events by themes, allowing you to explore different facets of the subject’s life. A well-structured biography guides readers smoothly through the subject’s experiences, fostering a deeper connection and understanding.

Show, Don’t Tell: Evocative Storytelling Vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes breathe life into your biography. Rather than merely listing facts, employ descriptive language to recreate scenes and emotions, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the subject’s world. Use anecdotes to illustrate key moments, capturing the essence of the subject’s character and the impact of events on their journey. Integrating quotes from the subject, contemporaries, or relevant sources adds authenticity and depth. Through this technique, you transport readers into the subject’s experiences, enabling them to witness the moments that shaped their lives.

Balanced Perspective: Portraying Strengths and Flaws A balanced portrayal adds credibility and depth to your biography. While it’s tempting to focus solely on accomplishments, a well-rounded view includes the subject’s strengths and flaws. This authenticity humanises the subject, making it relatable and multidimensional. By acknowledging both successes and challenges, readers gain a more honest understanding of their journey. Balancing positives and negatives helps readers empathise with the subject, connecting them on a deeper level and offering a more genuine insight into their lives.

Engaging Emotions: Creating Emotional Resonance Emotions are a potent tool in biography writing. Delve into the subject’s feelings, struggles, and aspirations to create an emotional connection with readers. By tapping into their emotional experiences, you make the narrative relatable and engaging. Sharing personal challenges and triumphs allows readers to empathise and reflect on their own lives. This emotional resonance elevates the biography from a mere factual account to a compelling and moving story that lingers in readers’ minds, leaving a lasting impact.

Citing Sources: Ensuring Accuracy and Credibility Accurate information is vital in biography writing. Properly cite your sources to maintain credibility and integrity. Clear citations not only lend authority to your work but also provide readers with the opportunity to explore further if they desire. Accurate referencing safeguards against misinformation and ensures that your portrayal is based on reliable evidence. In addition to enhancing your credibility, thorough citations demonstrate your commitment to thorough research and ethical writing practises, contributing to the overall trustworthiness of your biography.

Complete Guide to Write a Biography. Start Writing Your Biography Now

Writing an Autobiography:

Reflecting on Significant Moments and Experiences Initiating an autobiography involves introspection into your life’s pivotal moments. Delve into memories that have influenced your journey, such as turning points, challenges, relationships, and achievements. Reflect on these experiences, dissecting their impact on your personal growth and development. By contemplating these key events, you gain insight into the narrative threads that weave your life story together. This reflective process sets the foundation for an authentic autobiography that resonates with readers on a profound level.

Developing Your Unique Voice and Tone Crafting an autobiography demands a consistent voice and tone that reflect your personality. Write in a way that feels true to you, capturing your unique perspective and emotions. Authenticity is key, as it allows readers to connect with your narrative on a personal level. Whether your tone is introspective, humorous, or contemplative, ensure it aligns with the essence of your experiences. By embracing your genuine voice, you create an autobiography that not only tells your story but also conveys the essence of who you are.

Structured Storytelling for Engagement While autobiographies can be more flexible in structure compared to biographies, organising your narrative into coherent sections or themes enhances its readability. By grouping related experiences together, you provide readers with a clearer understanding of the themes that have shaped your life. This structure helps maintain their engagement by guiding them through your journey in a logical and compelling manner. While allowing for creativity, a structured approach ensures that your autobiography remains focused and accessible.

Embracing honesty and authenticity Honesty is the bedrock of an impactful autobiography. Share not only your triumphs but also your mistakes and failures. Authenticity creates relatability, allowing readers to connect with your humanity and vulnerabilities. Your journey’s challenges and setbacks are just as integral to your story as your successes. By being candid about your experiences, you demonstrate resilience and growth, inspiring readers to reflect on their own paths. This level of authenticity fosters a deeper connection, making your autobiography a source of empathy and encouragement.

Adding Depth Through Reflection Incorporate reflection to imbue your autobiography with depth and meaning. Explore the lessons you’ve learned from your experiences and the transformations they’ve prompted. Delve into how these moments shaped your beliefs, values, and perspective on life. By offering insights gained from introspection, you provide readers with wisdom and a broader understanding of your journey. Reflection transforms your autobiography from a chronicle of events into a thoughtful exploration of personal growth and the profound impact of life’s moments.

Creating vivid details for immersion Immerse readers in your world by employing sensory details and vivid descriptions. Paint a picture with words, allowing readers to visualise the scenes and emotions you’re describing. By incorporating sensory elements like sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, you transport readers into the moments you’re recounting. This immersive experience draws them closer to your story, fostering a stronger connection. Vivid details not only make your autobiography more engaging but also enable readers to forge a deeper connection with your experiences and emotions.

In the realm of literature, biographies and autobiographies stand as powerful testaments to the diversity and richness of human existence. Whether you’re capturing the life of a historical figure or penning your own life story, the art of writing these genres involves meticulous research, introspection, and a keen understanding of human emotions. 

Through carefully chosen words and evocative storytelling, biographers and autobiographers alike can craft narratives that resonate with readers and offer a deeper understanding of the human experience. So, whether you’re writing about the extraordinary or the everyday, embrace the challenge and privilege of narrating lives through the written word.

Publish your book  with  BlueRoseONE  and become a  bestselling author . Don’t let your dream of becoming an author fade away, grab the opportunity now and publish your book – be it fiction, non fiction, poetry or more.

• About The Author
• Latest Posts

Mansi Chauhan

You May Also Like

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect marketer for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Blog • Book Marketing , Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Feb 24, 2022

How to Write a Killer Author Bio (With Template)

An author bio is a brief passage, usually about a paragraph , that introduces an author and sums up their work, their authorly credentials, and anything else their readers might need to know about them. 

While author bios may seem like an afterthought, or something to fill up the backmatter of your book , it’s actually an unassuming but valuable piece of copy. Done well, an author bio can give you credibility and introduce your readers to your other works. It can also be used in other promotional or publishing materials, as former Penguin Random House marketer Rachel Cone-Gorham explains:

“An author bio is something that will let readers get a sense of who you are, and is an important part for pitching media and book proposals.” 

For this reason, it’s important to get your bio right. Here is a 4-step process for writing your author bio:

1. Start with the facts readers need to know

2. open up with relevant biographical details, 3. wow them with your credentials, 4. finish it off with a personal touch.

Start your bio with an opening byline that quickly summarizes your profile, plus your most recent release. In a world full of skimmers, some readers may not get past the first couple of lines of your bio, so it’s important to frontload the essentials. 

For instance, a byline might read:

“Jane Doe is a Professor of Anthropology at UCLA and author of Insights Into Our Past: Tracing the Legacy of Intergenerational Trauma in 19th Century America .”

“Jane Doe is a poet, writer, and author of the new novel We Were Already There .”

If your work has won any prestigious awards or earned bestseller status, make sure to mention that here, too.

The great part about writing a one-liner as your opener is that it can double as a short bio for guest articles, social media, etc. — all of which can be a valuable part of your book publicity plan . 

FREE COURSE

Book Marketing 101

Learn seven tried-and-true strategies for boosting book sales.

Example: An attention grabbing intro

Novelist and short story writer Brandon Taylor's whole bio is great, but check out his heavy hitting first sentence that instantly tells you everything you really need to know:

If you’re stuck for words, you can use his bio, and other great “ About the Author ” examples for inspiration. 

RESOURCE: Your free author bio template

FREE RESOURCE

Grab our Author Bio Template

Use this to write an awesome “about me” in less than 5 minutes.

Your author bio is, naturally, a chance for you to introduce yourself, but it’s also an opportunity for you to introduce readers to your body of work, and share a little about your writing history. If you have other titles that you’ve released previously, now’s the time to mention them.

You may also want to include any personal connections to your work, and signpost why they’re relevant. For instance:

With over a decade of writing obituaries for the local paper, Jane has a uniquely wry voice that shines through in her newest collection of essays, which explore the importance we place on legacy.

A professionally trained electrician, Jane has spent the last decade reading and writing romance novels giving her characters a palpable spark! Her latest work is the sequel to her debut novel, In the Arms of a Stranger .

Have an author bio already, but want a second opinion on it? Take our quick quiz to see if it checks off all of the boxes.

Let us grade your author bio

Find out if your author bio is a 10/10. Takes one minute.

Top Tip: Write in the third person

Despite the fact that an author often writes or approves their own bio, it should be written in the third person — ‘they’ rather than ‘I’. Not only is this the industry standard, it also makes it easier to toot your own horn, which you should definitely be doing here.

Example: An author’s lived experience

One great example of a bio that shares biographical details is author Niyati Tamaskar , whose memoir Unafraid draws on her own experiences of cancer and the cultural baggage surrounding it. You can learn more about Niyati and her publishing story here .

Niyati Tamaskar is a mother, engineer, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. She speaks on issues of cultural bias, the stigma of cancer, and more. Her speaking and media appearances include her signature TEDx talk, a cover and feature spread in Columbus magazine on her journey and message of destigmatizing cancer, and a video created by Breastcancer.org on “How Niyati Tamaskar Overcame Cultural Cancer Stigma to Become an Advocate”—aimed at highlighting the minority experience while facing cancer.

An important job of an “About the Author” section is to boost your credentials, says editor Rachel: “You want to show your qualifications and credibility so that a reader will feel validated in choosing your book to read.”

That being said, it’s not a good idea to start listing every softball trophy you won in middle school. Only stick to credentials that directly relate to the content of your book. According to Rachel, “Qualifications can include writing courses, college degrees, awards, bestseller lists, and accolades or, for fiction authors, even a lifetime of interest.” Here are a few of her examples:

Jane has an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College, and was the recipient of the Vermont College creative writing award.

Jane is a historian at Vermont College and has spent over a decade researching World War 2.

Jane has traveled extensively around Eastern Europe, learning about the history of the region and walking the paths of her characters.

For non-fiction authors, your credentials are incredibly relevant as readers are far more likely to trust an authority on a subject, while fiction authors can focus more on why they write in a specific genre.

Book marketing consultant Rob Eagar suggests that another way to boost your credibility is to “to weave in any endorsements you may have received from well-known outlets… Readers pay more attention to authors with a proven track record.”

For example:

[Famous author] says Jane Doe is a unique new voice in the thriller genre.

How to Build an Amazing Author Blog

10 lessons to help you start your blog and boost your book sales.

Example: Amanda Ripley’s expert qualifications

One author using their credentials to their best advantage is non-fiction author Amanda Ripley. Check out her “About the Author”: 

Top tip: Keep it short

A good author bio is efficient beyond just the first line, as book launch specialist Joel Pitney suggests:

“People don't want to read long bios! Keep it under 300 words. Only include relevant materials and be as succinct as possible. If you've won a lot of awards, for example, only include the most impressive ones. Same goes if you’ve published a couple of books; only include your most successful three.”

Author bios are not a place for you to delve into a lengthy explanation of your history. However, you also don’t want your bio to be devoid of any personality. Adding a bit of color to your bio helps readers imagine who you are. Plus, if they can relate to you, it might be an extra push for them to buy your book. 

That’s why Joel Pitney suggests: “If there's room, and it's relevant, you can add some color, like where you live or something interesting that might not obviously relate to your writing career, but that makes you a more interesting person.”

This can be done subtly, like by referring to your location in your byline: 

“New-York based psychologist, Jane Doe…”

Or you can include a brief illustration of your lifestyle, says Rachel: “Jane lives and works out of her home at the base of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and spends her summers hiking and camping with her two children and husband.”

Finally, marketing consultant Rob suggests closing out with a quippy-one liner that illustrates what kind of writer you are. “If your writing is known for its humor, let it show in your bio.” For example:

Jane hopes to write her next novel soon, if she can stop reading other people's novels instead.

Example: Natalie Barelli’s chatty tone

Check out fiction writer Natalie Barelli’s bio for an example of personalization done right: 

Natalie Barelli can usually be found reading a book, and that book will more likely than not be a psychological thriller. Writing a novel was always on her bucket list, and eventually, with Until I Met Her, it became a reality. After He Killed Me is the second and final book in her Emma Fern Series. When not absorbed in the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie loves cooking, knits very badly, enjoys riding her Vespa around town, and otherwise spends far too much time at the computer. She lives in Australia, with her husband and extended family.

An author bio is unique to the writer, so everyone’s will look different — but by following our 4-step process and using the author bio template, you’ll include everything you need to maximize your chances of winning over readers.

And if you’re looking for more inspiration on how to build your online presence, check out more examples of the “ About the Author ” section or our course on how to build an author mailing list:

How to Build Your Author Mailing List

Learn how to connect with your audience and sell more books with email.

8 responses

Diane says:

07/06/2018 – 09:10

Excellent post! I really liked the way explained each point with examples. Author can write a big book but broke into sweat when it comes to write a bio about themselves. Sometimes they also need paper writing help. It have to be short and interesting, not boring. In that case your article will help them to write a killer one.

Nancy Man says:

20/06/2018 – 00:10

This was super helpful -- thanks! Sticking to these four elements worked great for me. I've finally got a bio that I'm not rolling my eyes at. :)

Antigone Blackwell says:

08/12/2018 – 19:01

If someone is reading this article, it is highly unlikely that they can boast being bestselling authors or share that they are on the third book of a highly successful series. More examples with start up authors would be great.

India Government Schemes says:

12/03/2019 – 11:42

This is awesome, but i am seeing in this days mostly hide there Bio in Blogs, But they don't know In The Blog Author Bio is also a Ranking Factor in the Google Search Ranking.

Joe Robinson says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Very helpful article that has helped me write my author bio for my upcoming book "Move Your Marriage to Greatness" a Marriage Replenishment Work designed to help couple achieve extraordinary accomplishments that are uncommon in many marriages today. I appreciate you making this article available.

Jitender Sharma says:

10/09/2019 – 05:00

Thanks for your post

Mike aantonio says:

14/11/2019 – 10:06

After reading the bio. samples mentioned above. Is it really necessary to introduce the author as a third party. Can't we directly say " Hi I am a blogger from so and so ......."

↪️ Martin Cavannagh replied:

15/11/2019 – 09:15

You can do... but it's not standard practice.

Comments are currently closed.

Continue reading

Recommended posts from the Reedsy Blog

The Differences Between Book Marketing and Publicity: Credibility Versus Control

Book marketing and book publicity comprise two main pillars of book promotion. Check out this post by Kellie Rendina to understand their differences.

Developing Your Author Brand: 6 Ways to Showcase Your Unique Writing Identity

An "author brand" can be a pretty vague concept. Learn how to successfully develop yours in this post by Harry Bingham.

How to Make Your Book Newsworthy: 5 Tips from a Publicist

How can you earn media coverage for your book? Book publicity takes some preparation and watchfulness, but it can help your book become news.

Amazon Editorial Reviews: An Indie Author’s Secret Weapon

In this post, we’ll explain why Amazon editorial reviews matter, how to secure them, and how to use them to impact your launch.

An Ode to Independent Bookshops: Lessons from the Road

How can independent bookshops and self-published authors support each other? Hear about a Reedsy author's book tour.

Social Media for Writers: The Complete Guide

Learn all about the major social media platforms for writers, and how to make the most of your social channels as an author!

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Write your bio in less than 5 minutes

For any writer wondering the right way to talk about themselves.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• How to Invest
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST FICTION 2023
• NEW Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Literary Fiction
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Best Biographies

Browse book recommendations:

• Ancient Biographies
• Artists' Biographies
• Group Biographies
• Literary Biographies
• Scientific Biographies

Whether you're looking for new biographies , or outstanding works written decades or even centuries ago, we have some recommendations. To help find a book about a specific person or group of people, we've set up the following lists:

The best historical biographies Some of our favourite philosophical biographies Lives of the classical composers The best literary biographies (Separately, we also have a section with interviews dedicated to specific literary figures , including, for example, an interview on Shakespeare’s life , recommended by James Shapiro of Columbia University). The lives of scientists Artists' lives

The Best Memoirs: The 2024 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist , recommended by May-lee Chai

I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir by Susan Kiyo Ito

Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm by David Mas Masumoto

Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison by Ahmed Naji, translated by Katharine Halls

How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair

Story of a Poem: A Memoir by Matthew Zapruder

It's been a "phenomenal" year for autobiographical writing, says May-lee Chai —the award-winning author and chair of the judges for this year's National Book Critics Circle prize for autobiography. Here she offers us a tour of the five memoirs that made their 2024 shortlist.

It’s been a “phenomenal” year for autobiographical writing, says May-lee Chai—the award-winning author and chair of the judges for this year’s National Book Critics Circle prize for autobiography. Here she offers us a tour of the five memoirs that made their 2024 shortlist.

The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

The Grimkés: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century by Jennifer Homans

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhaill & Rachael Wiseman

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times by Aaron Sachs

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor —chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor—chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Notable Memoirs of 2023 , recommended by Cal Flyn

Stay True by Hua Hsu

Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm

Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page

The Light Room: On Art and Care by Kate Zambreno

O Brother by John Niven

Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn selects the best recent autobiographical writing in this round-up of notable memoirs of 2023—taking in new work from such literary giants as Janet Malcolm and Annie Ernaux, the writer other writers are raving about, and a humorous debut depicting life in a haunted antiquarian bookshop.

The Best Literary Biographies , recommended by Lyndall Gordon

Selected Essays by T S Eliot

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson

Reading Chekhov by Janet Malcolm

Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman

Jane's Fame by Claire Harman

The inner life is a mystery but the best biographies expose the hidden kernel of a person, says literary biographer and academic, Lyndall Gordon . She picks five books that push the boundaries of the genre.

The inner life is a mystery but the best biographies expose the hidden kernel of a person, says literary biographer and academic, Lyndall Gordon. She picks five books that push the boundaries of the genre.

Award Winning Biographies of 2022 , recommended by Sophie Roell

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner

The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts

Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane by Paul Auster

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert

In telling stories of lives that are often very different from our own and yet connected to us by our common humanity, biographies are some of the most compelling nonfiction books around. Five Books editor Sophie Roell rounds up some of the biographies that have won or been shortlisted for prizes in 2022.

The Best Memoirs: The 2022 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist , recommended by Marion Winik

A Little Devil in America: Notes In Praise Of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha by Rodrigo Garcia

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortunes by Albert Samaha

Autobiography is evolving; increasingly we find the field dominated by 'genre-fluid' books that plait memoir together with strands of cultural criticism, history, journalism or even poetry. Here, Marion Winik , the memoirist and critic, talks us through the five books that have been shortlisted in the National Book Critic's Circle autobiography category—and describes the face of memoir in 2022.

Autobiography is evolving; increasingly we find the field dominated by 'genre-fluid' books that plait memoir together with strands of cultural criticism, history, journalism or even poetry. Here, Marion Winik, the memoirist and critic, talks us through the five books that have been shortlisted in the National Book Critic's Circle autobiography category—and describes the face of memoir in 2022.

The Best Biographies: the 2021 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne & Tamara Payne

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

Elizabeth Taylor , the author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee, discusses their 2021 shortlist for the title of the best biography—including a revelatory new book about the life of Malcolm X, a group biography of artists in the 1960s, and a book built from a cache of letters written in Japan's shogun era.

Elizabeth Taylor, the author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics’ Circle biography committee, discusses their 2021 shortlist for the title of the best biography—including a revelatory new book about the life of Malcolm X, a group biography of artists in the 1960s, and a book built from a cache of letters written in Japan’s shogun era.

The Best of Biography: the 2020 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King

The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin

L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron" by Lucasta Miller

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purcell

How do you find the perfect subject for a biography? “Pick a real bitch, or real bastard, and make sure they're dead,” a famous biographer once told Elizabeth Taylor . The author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee talks us through the books that made their 2020 shortlist.

How do you find the perfect subject for a biography? “Pick a real bitch, or real bastard, and make sure they're dead,” a famous biographer once told Elizabeth Taylor. The author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee talks us through the books that made their 2020 shortlist.

The Best Fashion Biographies , recommended by Justine Picardie

The Allure of Chanel by Paul Morand

Dior by Dior by Christian Dior

Shocking Life by Elsa Schiaparelli

The Unexpurgated Beaton by Cecil Beaton (Author), Hugo Vickers (Editor)

Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight

Justine Picardie , editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar UK and author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life , chooses her favourite fashion biographies, and considers whether fashion and art are inextricably linked.

Justine Picardie, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK and author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life , chooses her favourite fashion biographies, and considers whether fashion and art are inextricably linked.

The Best Biographies: the 2019 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous by Christopher Bonanos

Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century by Mark Lamster

The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created by Jane Leavy

Biography is booming, says the longtime book critic and biographer Elizabeth Taylor . Here she highlights the five fantastic books shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle 2019 biography award, and how historical lives provide insight into contemporary culture.

Biography is booming, says the longtime book critic and biographer Elizabeth Taylor. Here she highlights the five fantastic books shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle 2019 biography award, and how historical lives provide insight into contemporary culture.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

20 Best Biography Books Ever Written

By: Author Willow Heath

Posted on Last updated: 15th September 2023

There’s a lot that goes into writing a successful and poignant biography: honesty, detailed research, clear context, empathetic writing, and so much more.

Biographies hold a unique place in the world of nonfiction. The best biography books often appeal to people who may not even explicitly care about the book’s subject.

It’s all about human connection. Learning the historical, cultural, religious, political, economic and social contexts behind a person’s life is satisfying, but connection is what sells it.

For some of us, we read biography books to become intimate with historical figures we admire. For others, it’s simply about the act of connecting with someone through their story.

The Best Biography Books to Read Now

With all of that in mind, you’ll find here a wide range of the best biography books.

These are biographies about writers, artists, musicians, political figures, scientists, and more.

When composing a list of the best biography books, variety is essential. Variety of work, ethnicity, gender, and class.

And, with variety at the forefront, here is a selection of the best biography books of all time.

Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd is a huge name in the world of nonfiction, having written celebrated history books and biography books about British history.

Ackroyd has written an entire history of England, and another of London. And here, he dedicated five hundred pages to The Bard himself: William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is widely considered the most influential writer in history .

His plays are studied in schools around the world, and people make full careers out of being Shakespearean scholars, actors, directors, and more.

A legacy like The Bard’s inevitably leads to speculation, conspiracy, and more. Against all of that is Peter Ackroyd’s biography: a full and immersive journey through Shakespeare’s life.

Ackroyd has spent time researching and detailing the period in which Shakespeare lived.

London’s religious and political dynamics, Shakespeare’s own family and education, and the world of English theatre at the time. All of this and so much more is laid bare here.

While nobody will ever know every detail of Shakespeare’s life, Ackroyd has done his due diligence when it comes to piecing together a vivid picture of who The Bard was.

An incredible feat of biography writing from one of England’s best-loved historians, and one of the best biography books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of Shakespeare: The Biography here!

Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith

So much has been written about Vincent Van Gogh, and deservedly so.

Multiple documentaries have been made; museums, galleries, and interactive exhibitions have been built; songs have been sung; and books have been written.

The 19th century Dutch painter was a revolutionary of the craft, a legend of post-impressionism, and his life was a truly fascinating one.

His life is well-known, and remembered with as much intrigue as his art. Van Gogh was the original struggling artist, the one who began the toxic trend of seeing depression as a mark of genius.

Deeply troubled, Van Gogh lived a life of tragedy as much as one of beauty. And all of that is masterfully captured in Van Gogh: The Life .

Working alongside Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have brought us nearly a thousand pages of incredible research and writing.

Van Gogh: The Life is the definitive work of biography on the genius Dutch painter. A truly remarkable book, and one of the very best biography books ever written.

Buy a copy of Van Gogh: The Life here!

Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings

Ida B. Wells was a hero. Born in 1862, she was a great feminist and a leader of the Black civil rights movement.

Wells dedicated her entire life to the fight for equality within the USA; part of that fight was being a founding member of the NAAPC.

As a teacher and journalist, Wells used every skill available to advance the movement for racial equality forward. And all of that (and more) is explored in this immense biography.

Focussing less on the personal and more on the political, Ida: A Sword Among Lions is as much a history of American racial politics and change as it is a biography.

This is because the changes we can trace were made by Wells and her comrades, and those comrades — including her husband Ferdinand L. Barnett — are also given their due.

This is an inspiring work of nonfiction that throws into sharp relief the importance of community effort, of always fighting for change, justice, and equality.

It’s impossible to imagine what 20th century USA would have looked like without Ida B. Wells, but the changes she made were goliath, and the world should forever be grateful.

We are reminded of that over and again as we read this book and marvel at what she accomplished.

Paula J. Giddings has done Wells justice in a way that nobody else could have, and in doing so she has written one of the best biography books in American history.

Buy a copy of Ida: A Sword Among Lions here!

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

You’ll find that many of the best biography books ever written have also inspired a huge number of great cinematic biopics, and this is one of them.

American Prometheus is the biography on which writer/director Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece Oppenheimer was based.

And while that is an excellent piece of filmmaking, it took a huge number of liberties that make American Prometheus required reading for fans of the film.

Theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer led the USA’s Manhattan Project during World War II, which led to the invention and production of the first atomic bombs.

All of this led to two of the darkest days in world history: the bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

American Prometheus tells the full story of Oppenheimer’s life and the Manhattan Project.

This is a biography that offers readers so much; so much more than just a life. This is a book about the USA, about war, science, politics, and more.

An astonishing work of nonfiction that stands alongside many of the best biography books ever written.

Buy a copy of American Prometheus here!

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Shirley Jackson is a legendary figure within the world of gothic fiction, and of American literature in general.

A dark figure and an author of beloved gothic masterpieces such as The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle , and the iconic short story The Lottery .

Jackson is one of many great authors and artists whose own life was as strange, dynamic, and interesting as the art she created.

And that is all proven here in Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life — one of the best biography books about an author you’ll ever read.

If you happen to have seen Josephine Decker’s excellent 2020 film Shirley , a biopic about Jackson starring Elizabeth Moss, that film was in fact not based on this biography.

Jackson saw a lot of professional success in her life, and her legacy has been fully cemented, but her personal life was far more rocky and inconsistent.

This biography goes into why that was, exactly, and how her turbulent home and family life, relationships, and mental health inspired her great works.

Biographies of authors are often as compelling as what those authors created, but that goes double for this book; one of the best biography books you should read right now.

Buy a copy of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life here!

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

One of the most celebrated and beloved painters of the 20th century, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo left behind an enormous legacy.

Anecdotes about her life are liberally shared by those who love her work. Her disability, her love affairs, her communist sympathies. These are all well-known facts

But in this incredible biography of her life, author Hayden Herrera has expanded on these details, stitching them into the rich and dramatic tapestry of her varied life.

This is a book that celebrates her artistic genius and her creative mind, and one that also takes time to explore the love and romances of her life.

Kahlo’s tempestuous relationship with Diego Rivera is the stuff of legends, and it is given room to breathe in this biography, which paints them both in honest light.

Kahlo was a great feminist, a revolutionary, a proud communist, and a champion of the working class. All of that is explored and expanded upon here.

A wonderful exploration of the life and loves of one of the 20th century’s greatest painters, and one of the best biography books of our time.

Buy a copy of Frida here!

Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross

Few individuals from across the history of rock & roll — and modern music in general — have been as memorialised as Kurt Cobain.

There are many reasons for this: the ways in which he pushed and defined genres; his outspoken aggression towards sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry.

But the most obvious reason is his mind. Cobain battled depression for all of his twenty-seven years, until it finally won and he took his own life.

And so began an enormous legacy that has been explored across multiple books and documentaries, but this one is easily the most impressive.

Heavier Than Heaven is an unapologetically honest book that peels back the layers and exposes the truth behind so many myths about the infamous grunge rock star.

You’ll unlearn things that were never true, learn things you never would have known otherwise, and come close to understanding the mind behind the art.

Through some impressive sleuthing, analysis, and good old-fashioned journalism, Charles R. Cross has given us access to the man behind the myth.

A truly wonderful book, Heavier Than Heaven should be celebrated by Nirvana fans the world over. One of the best biography books the music world has ever been gifted.

Buy a copy of Heavier Than Heaven here!

The Brontes by Juliet Barker

The Bronte sisters were three of a kind. As Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel Glass Town explored, they were creative giants right from childhood.

Penning some of the finest works of romantic and gothic fiction in the history of British literature, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne are celebrated the world over.

And then there’s Branwell, a tragic young man who quite literally painted himself out of their lives.

This family was unique, exceptional, and strange. And all of that is captured in Juliet Barker’s The Brontes , an enormous thousand-page biography of the literary sisters.

When the world of art and literature has so many enigmatic figures, it’s hard to call any one work of nonfiction a “definitive” history or biography, but this might be it for the Brontes.

Juliet Barker spent more than a decade gathering every scrap of evidence and information about these sisters and their works, in order to paint this vivid tapestry of their lives.

The ways in which Charlotte controlled and oppressed the others; the unsung beauty of Branwell’s mind; the anxiety and depression that Emily struggled with.

All of this and so much more is put on display here in one of the very best biography books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy of The Brontes here!

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday

Chairman Mao Zedong was one of the great villains of recent world history, and there might be nobody better to tell his story than Wild Swans author Jung Chang.

Chang has dedicated so much of her life to telling the political stories of 20th century China, including her dynamic work Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Siste r .

But while that book and Wild Swans are both sweeping epic works of nonfiction that focus on multiple people, Mao is a dedicated biography of one man.

Mao’s monstrous political decisions as chairman of China were legendary, but what are far less well-known are the tactics and decisions behind them.

Mao Zedong’s laws and policies led to the most widespread and destructive famine in recorded history. But why? Questions like this are rarely asked, and even more rarely answered.

Jung Chang spent ten years of investigation to answer this, and so many even more pressing questions about Chairman Mao’s life, actions, and relationships.

Jung Chang wowed the world with Wild Swans , and then did it all over again with Mao: The Unknown Story , one of the best biography books anyone has ever written.

Buy a copy of Mao here!

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

Bad Gays is a remarkable anthology of miniature biographies, each focussing on an infamous person from world history who also happened to be queer.

From the Roman emperor Hadrian to the London gangster Ronnie Kray, Bad Gays offers up a selection of detailed short biographies of histories most unlovable gays.

Excellently researched and presented with real charm and wit, this is one of those rare biography books that blends the informative with the entertaining.

Amongst even the very best biography books, Bad Gays stands as something very important: a work that humanises the queer community by showing readers its darkest sides.

The breadth of subjects here is also satisfying and diverse. King James VI and I of Scotland and England, Lawrence of Arabia, and Japanese author Yukio Mishima are all explored here.

Bad Gays is a fantastic work of nonfiction, one of the most unique and best biography books of the past several years.

Buy a copy of Bad Gays here!

Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography by Walter Isaacson

Leonardo da Vinci’s legacy has cemented him as a unique mind within the realms of both art and science; an inventor and artist of unparalleled genius.

Placing someone on a podium that high can be dangerous and even beggar belief, but as Walter Isaacson’s biography proves, it is certainly deserved where da Vinci was concerned.

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian renaissance polymath who painted two of the best-known works of art the world has ever seen: the Mona Lisa, and the Last Supper.

But he was also someone with an unquenchable curiosity and an eye for discovery. His passions were spread across the sciences, from biology to geology.

All of this is captured and presented in this remarkable biography. This book explores how da Vinci studied all there was to study, and sought to understand the world on every level.

da Vinci was a man of curiosity and creativity, but he was also human. And this book is what really reminds us of that. It humanises this giant of art and science in a way that few books have.

Whether you’re a lover of Leonardo da Vinci or all you know about him is that he painted the Mona Lisa, this biography book has so much to offer you either way.

Buy a copy of Leonardo da Vinci here!

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

As was the case with American Prometheus and Oppenheimer (above), The Enigma is a biography that served as the inspiration for Morten Tyldum’s biopic The Imitation Game .

Unsurprisingly, however, Alan Turing: The Enigma is less concerned with drama and tension, and more with laying bare the extraordinary mind and the tragic life of Alan Turing.

Turning is best known for cracking the “Enigma Code” used by the Nazis during World War II, an act which turned the tide of war for the entire world.

Beyond that act, however, Turing was also a pioneer of computer design and technology, most simply expressed by his infamous “Turing Test”.

But the tragedy of his life was that Turning happened to be gay at a time in British history and culture where that simple fact led to social and political prejudice.

Turning didn’t commit suicide because he was gay; he was killed by a bigoted and unjust political system that ruined the life of a genius and a hero of war.

All of this is explored in great detail in a biography that does Turning’s life justice, which is the least he deserved.

Buy a copy of Alan Turing: The Enigma here!

Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art by Susan Napier

Hayao Miyazaki will forever be known as one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers. A master of multiple disciplines, including art, writing, and directing.

His films, most of which have dark and intense anti-war, anti-industrial, anti-capitalistic underpinnings, are some of the 20th and 21st century’s greatest works of art.

Born during World War II, raised in a turbulent post-war Japan, his life shaped his art and his expression. And all of that is explored in wonderful detail in Susan Napier’s Miyazakiworld .

It’s no secret that Miyazaki was always a workaholic and a perfectionist, but this book demonstrates that wonderfully, as it strips back all the purpose and meaning behind the smallest choices when it comes to his art.

Every tiny nuance, every word, every detail; Miyazaki’s films were meticulously designed, and we see the cogs turning in this biography.

Miyazakiworld contextualises Japan’s animation industry for a non-Japanese audience, gives us a personal background to Miyazaki’s work and writing, and so much more.

A really amazing biography that focuses on the art of a great filmmaker, how it exists, and why it exists. One of the best biography books for film and animation fans.

Buy a copy of Miyazakiworld here!

Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

After the enormous success of her Jane Austen biography (below), historian and TV personality Lucy Worsley turns her attention to another great woman of English literature.

Agatha Christie was, and will forever be remembered as, an astonishing force of creativit y within the world of literature.

Across a career longer than many human lives, Christie wrote timeless tales of murder and mystery, and brought us characters that remain beloved to this day.

But when it came to her personal life, Christie presented an image of meekness and good behaviour, which Worsley reveals was far from the truth.

There are so many facts and titbits about Christie’s life, career, and work ethic that fascinate her fans, but this brilliant biography goes so far beyond all of that.

Agatha Christie wrote many of the greatest thrillers and crime novels of all time, but she also had a wonderfully active and adventurous modern life.

All of that is explored with enthusiasm and wit by Worsley, who has clearly relished the challenge of unpacking the truth about Christie and bringing that truth to us.

Worsley is a charismatic writer and speaker, and that charisma shows in this book; one of the most humorous and best biography books of recent years.

Buy a copy of Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman here!

Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix by Charles R. Cross

Charles R. Cross has written two of the best biography books about members of the “27 Club” — musicians whom we lost at the cursed age of 27.

One was the biography of Kurt Cobain (above) and the other is this: Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix .

Hendrix was a rare example of a kind of reverse British invasion; an American prodigy who found fame and fandom in London’s rock ‘n’ roll era.

With The Jimi Hendrix Experience, he wrote and recorded three albums, and he made a name for himself as a revolutionary guitarist.

But there is so much more to his life behind the scenes. While his struggles with fame and addiction are well-documented, this biography dives so much deeper.

We learn about his tumultuous youth in Seattle and the things he truly wanted from life but rarely ever dared to mention.

Charles R. Cross has proven himself a fantastic biographer of great musicians, and the proof is here in Room Full of Mirrors .

Buy a copy of Room Full of Mirrors here!

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Another great biography that was given the Hollywood treatment; Sylvia Nasar’s excellent book on renowned mathematician John Nash adapted to the big screen by Ron Howard.

While that film won Howard an Academy Award for best director, it remains an adaptation and, as such, glosses over so much about Nash’s life that is important to know.

A Beautiful Mind tells the full story of John Nash, an eccentric mathematician whose chance to win a Nobel Prize was dashed because of how the world treated his schizophrenia.

As a mathematician, Nash had an enormous effect on the world of American economics, and the onset of his schizophrenia made him a compelling and fascinating person.

Nasar’s biography frames Nash’s schizophrenia in an honest light without vilifying or romanticising it, but it also doesn’t shy away from the more cruel of Nash’s actions.

For example, Nash was abusive towards his wife, unfaithful to her, and even pushed her down the stairs when she was pregnant. The film neatly glosses over these facts.

When creating a biography about a genius and a tragic figure, it’s important to humanise them and reveal the darker sides, even if they may be uncomfortable facts.

This is what makes Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind one of the best biography books of the past several decades.

Buy a copy of A Beautiful Mind here!

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley

Several years before writing her biography on Agatha Christie (above), historian Lucy Worsley dazzled Jane Austen fans with the fantastic Jane Austen at Home .

Jane Austen remains one of the most celebrated classic authors in the history of the English language. Her wit and social commentary is legendary .

The stories and characters of novels like Pride and Prejudice, Emma , Persuasion are beloved by bookworms, and likely always will be.

But who was the woman behind the wit? What in Austen’s life inspired such fantastic tales of family life, romance, sisterhood, class disparity, and more?

Lucy Worsley answers all of those questions, and many more, in this amazing biography that paints a vivid picture of Austen’s home life.

Here, we learn about her youth, her family, her home, her habits, her loves, and more.

This is a must-read for any Austen fan, and when it comes to literary figures, this is also one of the best biography books that exists.

Side note: I read this book before visiting Jane Austen’s house , and it wonderfully enhanced the experience.

Buy a copy of Jane Austen at Home here!

Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones

Completely peerless, Jim Henson was one of the most unique creative minds that 20th century TV and film ever had.

Often overshadowed by his creations — The Muppets, Sesame Street, Labyrinth , and his work on Star Wars — Henson was one-of-a-kind.

It’s thanks to his work that puppets remain a part of mainstream television, for children and adults alike, and here you can learn all about his life in this excellent biography.

Henson died tragically young, at age 53, from a bacterial infection, but he accomplished so much in his life, and those accomplishments brought so much joy to the world.

The characters and worlds that he created have gone on to resonate with people of all ages for decades. The impact that his films and TV shows have had is immeasurable.

With the generous support of Henson’s family, Brian Jay Jones has been able to present us with the full life story of Jim Henson and all that he did.

Buy a copy of Jim Henson: The Biography here!

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne & Tamara Payne

Few infamous public figures of American history have ever been as talked-about and obsessed over as Malcolm X.

A civil rights activist who joined the Nation of Islam while in prison as a young man, Malcolm X has fascinated many kinds of people for many reasons for several decades.

Beginning in 1990, renowned investigative journalist Les Payne worked to gather more than a hundred hours worth of interviews surrounding Malcolm X.

However, Payne died before the book was completed, and so his daughter and research partner Tamara finished their work and had it published in 2020.

The Dead Are Arising went on to win the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.

A remarkable work of investigative journalism that reveals to its readers an equally remarkable life.

Given the magnitude of Malcolm X’s life and legacy, and that of Les Payne’s own work and renown, The Dead Are Arising is a uniquely powerful biography.

When it comes to biographies built from tremendous hard work of investigative journalism, few compare to The Dead Are Arising .

Buy a copy of The Dead Are Arising here!

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields

Author Charles J. Shields is a well-renowned biographer of American writers, and Mockingbird is his most celebrated work.

Two years after its publication, Shields even adapted Mockingbird into a version more palatable for younger readers, titled I Am Scout .

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee tells the story of one of 20th century USA’s best-known and best-loved authors.

One of the most unique and intriguing things about Lee was that she only ever wrote the one novel, and that novel is rightly considered a great American classic.

To Kill A Mockingbird is taught in schools across the US and UK to this day; it received a celebrated film adaptation; it has even been adapted to the stage with amazing results.

But who was the woman behind this true American masterpiece of a novel? Charles J. Shields answers that question with appreciation and attentiveness.

Buy a copy of Mockingbird here!

How to Write a Biography

Biographies are big business. Whether in book form or Hollywood biopics, the lives of the famous and sometimes not-so-famous fascinate us.

While it’s true that most biographies are about people who are in the public eye, sometimes the subject is less well-known. Mostly though, famous or not, the person who is written about has led a life that is in some way incredible.

While your students will most likely have a basic understanding of a biography, it’s worth taking a little time before they put pen to paper to tease out a crystal clear definition of a biography.

What Is a Biography?

Simply put, a biography is an account of someone’s life written by someone else . While there is a genre known as a fictional biography, for the most part, biographies are, by definition, nonfiction.

Generally speaking, biographies provide an account of the subject’s life from the earliest days of their childhood right up to the present day or their death if the subject is deceased.

The job of a biography is more than just to outline the bare facts of a person’s life.

Rather than just listing the basic details of their upbringing, hobbies, education, work, relationships, and death, a well-written biography should also paint a picture of the subject’s personality, and as well as their experience of life.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING BIOGRAPHIES

Teach your students to write AMAZING BIOGRAPHIES & AUTOBIOGRAPHIES using proven RESEARCH SKILLS and WRITING STRATEGIES .

• Understand the purpose of both forms of biography.
• Explore the language and perspective of both.
• Prompts and Challenges to engage students in writing a biography.
• Dedicated lessons for both forms of biography.
• Biographical Projects can expand students’ understanding of reading and writing a biography.
• A COMPLETE 82-PAGE UNIT – NO PREPARATION REQUIRED.

What Are the Main Features of a Biography?

Before students begin writing a biography, they’ll need to have a firm grasp of the main features of the genre. A good way to determine how well they understand these essential elements of the genre is by asking them to compile a checklist.

At a minimum, their checklists should contain the items below. Be sure to help them fill in any gaps before moving on to the writing process.

The purpose of a biography is to provide an account of someone’s life.

Biography structure.

ORIENTATION (BEGINNING) Open your biography with a strong hook to grab the reader’s attention

SEQUENCING: In most cases, biographies are written in chronological order unless you are a very competent writer consciously trying to break from this trend.

COVER: childhood, upbringing, education, influences, accomplishments, relationships, etc. – everything that helps the reader to understand the person.

CONCLUSION: Wrap your biography up with some details about what the subject is doing now if they are still alive. If they have passed away, make mention of what impact they have made and what their legacy is or will be.

BIOGRAPHY FEATURES

LANGUAGE Use descriptive and figurative language that will paint images inside your audience’s minds as they read. Use time connectives to link events.

PERSPECTIVE Biographies are written from the third person’s perspective.

DETAILS: Give specific details about people, places, events, times, dates, etc. Reflect on how events shaped the subject. You might want to include some relevant photographs with captions. A timeline may also be of use depending upon your subject and what you are trying to convey to your audience.

TENSE Written in the past tense (though ending may shift to the present/future tense)

THE PROCESS OF WRITING A BIOGRAPHY

Like any form of writing, you will find it simple if you have a plan and follow it through. These steps will ensure you cover the essential bases of writing a biography essay.

Firstly, select a subject that inspires you. Someone whose life story resonates with you and whose contribution to society intrigues you. The next step is to conduct thorough research. Engage in extensive reading, explore various sources, watch documentaries, and glean all available information to provide a comprehensive account of the person’s life.

Creating an outline is essential to organize your thoughts and information. The outline should include the person’s early life, education, career, achievements, and any other significant events or contributions. It serves as a map for the writing process, ensuring that all vital information is included.

Your biography should have an engaging introduction that captivates the reader’s attention and provides background information on the person you’re writing about. It should include a thesis statement that summarizes the main points of the biography.

Writing a biography in chronological order is crucial . You should begin with the person’s early life and move through their career and achievements. This approach provides clarity on how the person’s life unfolded and how they accomplished their goals.

A biography should be written in a narrative style , capturing the essence of the person’s life through vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and quotes. Avoid dry, factual writing and focus on creating a compelling narrative that engages the reader.

Adding personal insights and opinions can enhance the biography’s overall impact, providing a unique perspective on the person’s achievements, legacy, and impact on society.

Editing and proofreading are vital elements of the writing process. Thoroughly reviewing your biography ensures that the writing is clear, concise, and error-free. You can even request feedback from someone else to ensure that it is engaging and well-written.

Finally, including a bibliography at the end of your biography is essential. It gives credit to the sources that were used during research, such as books, articles, interviews, and websites.

Tips for Writing a Brilliant Biography

Biography writing tip #1: choose your subject wisely.

There are several points for students to reflect on when deciding on a subject for their biography. Let’s take a look at the most essential points to consider when deciding on the subject for a biography:

Interest: To produce a biography will require sustained writing from the student. That’s why students must choose their subject well. After all, a biography is an account of someone’s entire life to date. Students must ensure they choose a subject that will sustain their interest throughout the research, writing, and editing processes.

Merit: Closely related to the previous point, students must consider whether the subject merits the reader’s interest. Aside from pure labors of love, writing should be undertaken with the reader in mind. While producing a biography demands sustained writing from the author, it also demands sustained reading from the reader.

Therefore, students should ask themselves if their chosen subject has had a life worthy of the reader’s interest and the time they’d need to invest in reading their biography.

Information: Is there enough information available on the subject to fuel the writing of an entire biography? While it might be a tempting idea to write about a great-great-grandfather’s experience in the war. There would be enough interest there to sustain the author’s and the reader’s interest, but do you have enough access to information about their early childhood to do the subject justice in the form of a biography?

Biography Writing Tip #2: R esearch ! Research! Research!

While the chances are good that the student already knows quite a bit about the subject they’ve chosen. Chances are 100% that they’ll still need to undertake considerable research to write their biography.

As with many types of writing , research is an essential part of the planning process that shouldn’t be overlooked. If a student wishes to give as complete an account of their subject’s life as possible, they’ll need to put in the time at the research stage.

An effective way to approach the research process is to:

1. Compile a chronological timeline of the central facts, dates, and events of the subject’s life

2. Compile detailed descriptions of the following personal traits:

•      Physical looks
•      Character traits
•      Values and beliefs

3. Compile some research questions based on different topics to provide a focus for the research:

• Childhood : Where and when were they born? Who were their parents? Who were the other family members? What education did they receive?
• Obstacles: What challenges did they have to overcome? How did these challenges shape them as individuals?
• Legacy: What impact did this person have on the world and/or the people around them?
• Dialogue & Quotes: Dialogue and quotations by and about the subject are a great way to bring color and life to a biography. Students should keep an eagle eye out for the gems that hide amid their sources.

As the student gets deeper into their research, new questions will arise that can further fuel the research process and help to shape the direction the biography will ultimately go in.

Likewise, during the research, themes will often begin to suggest themselves. Exploring these themes is essential to bring depth to biography, but we’ll discuss this later in this article.

Research Skills:

Researching for biography writing is an excellent way for students to hone their research skills in general. Developing good research skills is essential for future academic success. Students will have opportunities to learn how to:

• Gather relevant information
• Evaluate different information sources
• Select suitable information
• Organize information into a text.

Students will have access to print and online information sources, and, in some cases, they may also have access to people who knew or know the subject (e.g. biography of a family member).

These days, much of the research will likely take place online. It’s crucial, therefore, to provide your students with guidance on how to use the internet safely and evaluate online sources for reliability. This is the era of ‘ fake news ’ and misinformation after all!

COMPLETE TEACHING UNIT ON INTERNET RESEARCH SKILLS USING GOOGLE SEARCH

Teach your students ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF THE INFORMATION ERA to become expert DIGITAL RESEARCHERS.

⭐How to correctly ask questions to search engines on all devices.

⭐ How to filter and refine your results to find exactly what you want every time.

⭐ Essential Research and critical thinking skills for students.

⭐ Plagiarism, Citing and acknowledging other people’s work.

⭐ How to query, synthesize and record your findings logically.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip #3: Find Your Themes In Biography Writing

Though predominantly a nonfiction genre, the story still plays a significant role in good biography writing. The skills of characterization and plot structuring are transferable here. And, just like in fiction, exploring themes in a biographical work helps connect the personal to the universal. Of course, these shouldn’t be forced; this will make the work seem contrived, and the reader may lose faith in the truthfulness of the account. A biographer needs to gain and maintain the trust of the reader.

Fortunately, themes shouldn’t need to be forced. A life well-lived is full of meaning, and the themes the student writer is looking for will emerge effortlessly from the actions and events of the subject’s life. It’s just a case of learning how to spot them.

One way to identify the themes in a life is to look for recurring events or situations in a person’s life. These should be apparent from the research completed previously. The students should seek to identify these patterns that emerge in the subject’s life. For example, perhaps they’ve had to overcome various obstacles throughout different periods of their life. In that case, the theme of overcoming adversity is present and has been identified.

Usually, a biography has several themes running throughout, so be sure your students work to identify more than one theme in their subject’s life.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING Tip: #4 Put Something of Yourself into the Writing

While the defining feature of a biography is that it gives an account of a person’s life, students must understand that this is not all a biography does. Relating the facts and details of a subject’s life is not enough. The student biographer should not be afraid to share their thoughts and feelings with the reader throughout their account of their subject’s life.

The student can weave some of their personality into the fabric of the text by providing commentary and opinion as they relate the events of the person’s life and the wider social context at the time. Unlike the detached and objective approach we’d expect to find in a history textbook, in a biography, student-writers should communicate their enthusiasm for their subject in their writing.

This makes for a more intimate experience for the reader, as they get a sense of getting to know the author and the subject they are writing about.

Student Examples of Biography Writing

• Year 5 Example
• Year 7 Example
• Year 9 Example

“The Rock ‘n’ Roll King: Elvis Presley”

Elvis Aaron Presley, born on January 8, 1935, was an amazing singer and actor known as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Even though he’s been dead for nearly 50 years, I can’t help but be fascinated by his incredible life!

Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, in a tiny house with his parents and twin brother. His family didn’t have much money, but they shared a love for music. Little did they know Elvis would become a music legend!

When he was only 11 years old, Elvis got his first guitar. He taught himself to play and loved singing gospel songs. As he got older, he started combining different music styles like country, blues, and gospel to create a whole new sound – that’s Rock ‘n’ Roll!

In 1954, at the age of 19, Elvis recorded his first song, “That’s All Right.” People couldn’t believe how unique and exciting his music was. His famous hip-swinging dance moves also made him a sensation!

Elvis didn’t just rock the music scene; he also starred in movies like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.” But fame came with challenges. Despite facing ups and downs, Elvis kept spreading happiness through his music.

Tragically, Elvis passed away in 1977, but his music and charisma live on. Even today, people worldwide still enjoy his songs like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Elvis Presley’s legacy as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll will live forever.

Long Live the King: I wish I’d seen him.

Elvis Presley, the Rock ‘n’ Roll legend born on January 8, 1935, is a captivating figure that even a modern-day teen like me can’t help but admire. As I delve into his life, I wish I could have experienced the magic of his live performances.

Growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis faced challenges but found solace in music. At 11, he got his first guitar, a symbol of his journey into the world of sound. His fusion of gospel, country, and blues into Rock ‘n’ Roll became a cultural phenomenon.

The thought of being in the audience during his early performances, especially when he recorded “That’s All Right” at 19, sends shivers down my spine. Imagining the crowd’s uproar and feeling the revolutionary energy of that moment is a dream I wish I could have lived.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical prodigy; he was a dynamic performer. His dance moves, the embodiment of rebellion, and his roles in films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock” made him a true icon.

After watching him on YouTube, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’ll never witness the King’s live performances. The idea of swaying to “Hound Dog” or being enchanted by “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in person is a missed opportunity. Elvis may have left us in 1977, but he was the king of rock n’ roll. Long live the King!

Elvis Presley: A Teen’s Take on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon”

Elvis Presley, born January 8, 1935, was a revolutionary force in the music world, earning his title as the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Exploring his life, even as a 16-year-old today, I’m captivated by the impact he made.

Hailing from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis grew up in humble beginnings, surrounded by the love of his parents and twin brother. It’s inspiring to think that, despite financial challenges, this young man would redefine the music scene.

At 11, Elvis got his first guitar, sparking a self-taught journey into music. His early gospel influences evolved into a unique fusion of country, blues, and gospel, creating the electrifying genre of Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1954, at only 19, he recorded “That’s All Right,” marking the birth of a musical legend.

Elvis wasn’t just a musical innovator; he was a cultural phenomenon. His rebellious dance moves and magnetic stage presence challenged the norms. He transitioned seamlessly into acting, starring in iconic films like “Love Me Tender” and “Jailhouse Rock.”

However, fame came at a cost, and Elvis faced personal struggles. Despite the challenges, his music continued to resonate. Even now, classics like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” transcend generations.

Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is undeniable. He was known for his unique voice, charismatic persona, and electrifying performances. He sold over one billion records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling solo artists in history. He received numerous awards throughout his career, including three Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Elvis’s influence can still be seen in today’s music. Many contemporary artists, such as Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake, have cited Elvis as an inspiration. His music continues to be featured in movies, TV shows, and commercials.

Elvis left us in 1977, but his legacy lives on. I appreciate his breaking barriers and fearlessly embracing his artistic vision. Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture is timeless, a testament to the enduring power of his artistry. His music has inspired generations and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Teaching Resources

Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.

BIOGRAPHY WRITING TEACHING IDEAS AND LESSONS

We have compiled a sequence of biography-related lessons or teaching ideas that you can follow as you please. They are straightforward enough for most students to follow without further instruction.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 1:

This session aims to give students a broader understanding of what makes a good biography.

Once your students have compiled a comprehensive checklist of the main features of a biography, allow them to use it to assess some biographies from your school library or on the internet using the feature checklist.

When students have assessed a selection of biographies, take some time as a class to discuss them. You can base the discussion around the following prompts:

• Which biographies covered all the criteria from their checklist?
• Which biographies didn’t?
• Which biography was the most readable in terms of structure?
• Which biography do you think was the least well-structured? How would you improve this?

Looking at how other writers have interpreted the form will help students internalize the necessary criteria before attempting to produce a biography. Once students have a clear understanding of the main features of the biography, they’re ready to begin work on writing a biography.

When the time does come to put pen to paper, be sure they’re armed with the following top tips to help ensure they’re as well prepared as possible.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 2:

This session aims to guide students through the process of selecting the perfect biography subject.

Instruct students to draw up a shortlist of three potential subjects for the biography they’ll write.

Using the three criteria mentioned in the writing guide (Interest, Merit, and Information), students award each potential subject a mark out of 5 for each of the criteria. In this manner, students can select the most suitable subject for their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 3:

This session aims to get students into the researching phase and then prioritise events and organise them chronologically.

Students begin by making a timeline of their subject’s life, starting with their birth and ending with their death or the present day. If the student has yet to make a final decision on the subject of their biography, a family member will often serve well for this exercise as a practice exercise.

Students should research and gather the key events of the person’s life, covering each period of their life from when they were a baby, through childhood and adolescence, right up to adulthood and old age. They should then organize these onto a timeline. Students can include photographs with captions if they have them.

They can present these to the class when they have finished their timelines.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 4:

Instruct students to look over their timeline, notes, and other research. Challenge them to identify three patterns that repeat throughout the subject’s life and sort all the related events and incidents into specific categories.

Students should then label each category with a single word. This is the thematic concept or the broad general underlying idea. After that, students should write a sentence or two expressing what the subject’s life ‘says’ about that concept.

This is known as the thematic statement . With the thematic concepts and thematic statements identified, the student now has some substantial ideas to explore that will help bring more profound meaning and wider resonance to their biography.

BIOGRAPHY LESSON IDEA # 5:

Instruct students to write a short objective account of an event in their own life. They can write about anyone from their past. It needn’t be more than a couple of paragraphs, but the writing should be strictly factual, focusing only on the objective details of what happened.

Once they have completed this, it’s time to rewrite the paragraph, but they should include some opinion and personal commentary this time.

The student here aims to inject some color and personality into their writing, to transform a detached, factual account into a warm, engaging story.

Get our FREE Biography Writing Graphic Organizer

Use this valuable tool in the research and writing phases to keep your students on track and engaged.

WRITING CHECKLIST & RUBRIC BUNDLE

To Conclude

By this stage, your students should have an excellent technical overview of a biography’s essential elements.

They should be able to choose their subject in light of how interesting and worthy they are, as well as give consideration to the availability of information out there. They should be able to research effectively and identify emerging themes in their research notes. And finally, they should be able to bring some of their personality and uniqueness into their retelling of the life of another.

Remember that writing a biography is not only a great way to develop a student’s writing skills; it can be used in almost all curriculum areas. For example, to find out more about a historical figure in History, to investigate scientific contributions to Science, or to celebrate a hero from everyday life.

Biography is an excellent genre for students to develop their writing skills and to find inspiration in the lives of others in the world around them.

HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY TUTORIAL VIDEO

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO BIOGRAPHY WRITING

How to write an Autobiography

How to Write a Historical Recount Text

15 Awesome Recount & Personal Narrative Topics

Personal Narrative Writing Guide

Share Your Story With Your Family

Life Writing is a Journey of Self-Discovery, Healing & Transformation

Create a Life Story Memoir Book Your Family Will Love

The Life Writer App

Makes life story memoir book writing & sharing easy – to brighten and heighten lives..

“My dad didn't think his life was that special or worth preserving inside a book. But once he began writing it, he LOVED it! And when it was finished, we all found it to be extraordinary - filled with many previously unknown stories, life experiences, and lessons learned. All of his thoughts, adventures, and most treasured photos are now inside that wonderful book for our family to cherish for generations. It has truly inspired us,  and we are grateful to have it now.”

             -Teri DeVincent, Co-Founder     

- See Video Above Left

Writing and Sharing Your Story Is Easy!

Answer customized life story questions, add your favorite photos, download and print your book, toll-free customer support included.

See Example Book

Your Memoir Book - Your Way

                 ,                       the life writer app delivers 2 memoirs :,                               1. a digital memoir book file (pdf) - which can be shared, saved or printed out ,                               2. a physical memoir book - with cover options similar to shown above,                                             (app purchase includes 1  6 x 9 inch black & white soft cover book, up to 150 pages),                                                                                    additional books :,                                                                                 2 books (1 extra): $31,                                                                                 3 books (2 extra): $73,                                                                                 4 books (3 extra): $112,                                                                                 5 books (4 extra): $149,                                                                             need more books call us,                                                                                    ,                                   have a question call or text: 888-501-7325 or click contact above,                                                                                                                                        , limited time introductory price.

Buy A Gift Certificate

For a  birthday, anniversary, retirement or other special gift. we email those out asap..

Buy a Gift Card

Buy 2, Give 1 Commitment

We are committed to making memoir writing available to everyone, and have adopted a buy two, give one policy..

For every two app licenses that we sell, we donate one free copy to someone in need.

Do you know a person (including a U.S. Service Veteran) that would benefit from a free copy of The Life Writer App? If yes ...                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Let Us Know

Upgrade Today Block

This is a free trial version..

Upgrade today for access to over 400 patented questions specially designed to help you write and discover a life story. You'll also be able to publish your book on demand as well as receive priority access to our support team.

Trial version includes:

• Ability to test all of the application features
• Access to one chapters and questions
• Book preview (you will not be able to print)

Upgrade now to receive:

• Access to all chapters, and our full, patented system of over 400 tailored questions
• Ability to publish as many books on-demand as you like
• Priority access to support team

No credit card required

100% money back guarantee

The Life Writer

BRYN DONOVAN

tell your stories, love your life

• Writing Inspiration
• Semi-Charmed Life
• Reading & Research

11 Good Author Bio Examples

It’s funny that one of the hardest things for some writers to write is a paragraph about themselves! Many writers—especially unpublished writers and first-time authors—aren’t sure how to write a short author bio or a longer introductory one. So today, I’m sharing what I think are some great author bio examples.

Sooner or later, we all have to write one. Some agents and editors ask for biographical information as part of a query or submission. Publishers usually ask their authors for them for their website and the back of the book. Most authors want to set up profiles on platforms like Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub, and some writers want a short author bio for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social media accounts. And when writers set up a website, an “about the author” paragraph or statement is often front and center.

(By the way, if you’re interested in setting up a website, be sure to check out my post on author website examples !)

I’m including author bio examples from several different kinds of writers here. A couple of them haven’t yet published anything yet. The right approach for you will depend on your goals, your personality, where you are on your writing journey, and where the biographical information will appear, so I’ve tried to include several approaches.

If you’ve ever been intimidated by author bios that are basically a long list of publishing credentials and awards, let me share a little secret. Readers may not connect with those bios as much as they connect with yours! Serious and academic authors often have professional reasons to have author bios that function as resumes. However…

Readers respond to honesty, simplicity, originality, and sometimes, a sense of humor.

I do think it helps to have some personal information in an author bio, but don’t share anything about your personal life that you don’t feel 100% comfortable putting out there.

But first, let’s talk about:

How Long Should an Author Bio Be?

Short author bios are very versatile. In my day job in publishing, when I ask authors for bios, I ask for 100 words or less . This ensures some consistency on our publisher website and in our “About the Author” pages, plus the shorter length also forces a person to make some smart decisions and keeps them from rambling. This means the bio will probably make a better impression. I think it’s a great length for the inside of a book.

If you’re writing an “About Me” on your blog or website, however, it may be quite a bit longer! It can become more of an introductory blog post…and it can serve other purposes as well (as you’ll see in a couple of the examples below.)

I’ll note the word count on all of the examples below so you get a feel for length!

Author Bio Examples

1. an unpublished middle grade author bio.

This first one is a Twitter bio, and I should note here that the author, Liz Hanson, has rewritten her name on Twitter to “Liz Hanson is querying her MG novel in verse.” This is so smart: if she participates in Twitter pitch events or if an agent looks her up on Twitter, she looks serious about her writing career.

Her short Twitter bio continues that same impression.

Inspired by young minds and wise words. ELD teacher, mother, MG writer. Member of SCBWI. (15 words)

SCBWI is the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and being part of a professional organization suggests that you’re taking the time to learn all about a writing career and the industry.

2. A Bestselling Fantasy Author Bio

Emily R. King shares her favorite snack and her interest in wildlife (I think?) in her bio.

Emily R. King is the author of the Hundredth Queen series, as well as Before the Broken Star, Into the Hourglass, and Everafter Song in the Evermore Chronicles. Born in Canada and raised in the United States, she is a shark advocate, a consumer of gummy bears, and an islander at heart, but her greatest interests are her children and their three cats. (63 words)

3. A Bio From an Author Who Writes In More Than One Genre

Multiple pen names aren’t unusual for authors, and Patricia Sargaent has three of them because she writes in different genres. I work with her as Olivia Matthews (cozy mystery), and I didn’t realize for quite a while that I had enjoyed one of her books that she published as Regina Hart!

This can be tricky to wrangle in a website presence. Patricia has one author bio to cover all of them. Notice that the bio is doing much more than just introducing her: it’s also inviting you to follow her on social media, hire her as a speaker or teacher, and sign up for her newsletter. Many authors use the “about me” section on their website to do this, and it’s smart.

Patricia Sargeant is the national best-selling, award-winning author of more than 20 novels. Her work has been featured in national publications such as Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Kirkus Reviews, Suspense Magazine, Mystery Scene Magazine, Library Journal and RT Book Reviews. She’s also been interviewed on podcasts including Destination Mystery with Laura Brennan, Conversations LIVE! with Cyrus Webb, Read You Later with Lasheera Lee and Katara’s Café with Katara Johnson.

Patricia has been a keynote speaker and presenter at various events. She’s conducted numerous writing craft workshops for writers groups and book conferences, and offers online fiction writing courses. Visit her  The Write Spot website for details. To contact Patricia about attending your event, email her at [email protected].

Patricia loves to hear from readers. You can email her at [email protected] Other ways to stay in touch with Patricia: Enewsletter Facebook Twitter YouTube channel: BooksByPatricia

Click here to watch  her author brand video. (151 words)

4. A Self-Published Romance Author Bio

Lucy Score is an exceptionally successful self-published romance author. Her bio on her website focuses on her personal background and her development as a writer.

Lucy grew up in rural Pennsylvania with a lot of time on her hands and a big imagination. She was the oldest of three in a literary household. Dinners were often spent in silence while family members had their noses buried in books. A passion for writing took hold at five when she taught her brother to write his name on the bathroom door.

She started writing (on paper) in the second grade, first about pilgrims on the Mayflower and over the years graduated to essays, articles, blogs, and finally books.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Lucy pretended to be a normal adult by holding down jobs that included event planner, bartender, newspaper lackey, and yoga instructor.

Lucy and Mr. Lucy, enjoy spending time with their ten nieces and nephews and are determined to learn to sail so they can live on a sailboat in the Caribbean someday. (148 words)

5. A Bio of an Unpublished Author Who Also Offers Other Services

Joanne Machin does other things besides write, and that’s true of a lot of writers. (Lots of them are also visual artists, for instance!) You can definitely combine the two in a bio for a website. Here’s how Joanne handled it in her sassy, fun, but informational author bio.

Joanne Machin is an author of flirty, nerdy, feminist contemporary adult #ownvoices romance. She also runs her own business as a freelance editor and virtual assistant for other business owners. In her free time, she likes to find new coffee shops and restaurants, obsess over stationery and all things planner-related, read, practice hot yoga, and play video games.  Joanne Machin resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Thomas, and their Welsh terrier, Oliver. She received her Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Washington . (89 words)

6. A Bestselling Young Adult Author Bio

Adam Silvera’s bio is short and focuses on his publications, but he throws in something at the end to make you smile.

Adam Silvera is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END, MORE HAPPY THAN NOT, HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME, INFINITY SON and INFINITY REAPER. He has also co-written WHAT IF IT’S US and HERE’S TO US with Becky Albertalli. He was born and raised in the Bronx and now lives in Los Angeles. He is tall for no reason. (67 words)

7. A Bestselling Children’s Author Bio

Adam Wallace writes this short bio in the first person, which is unusual and feels more friendly—as if he’s personally introducing himself to you. Again, there’s a bit of humor, and the bio also explains what he hopes to do for his readers. Authors of books for adults can do this, too! I personally think that if you’ve hit the NYT and the USA Today , saying you’re also an Amazon bestselling author is a bit beside the point, but it’s no big deal!

I am a New York Times , Amazon and USA Today bestselling author who loves writing stories that make children laugh and get excited about reading and drawing and writing. I also love taking naps and listening to music. Not at the same time. (43 words)

8. A Bestselling Romance Author Bio

H elen Hoang has a really endearing “about the author.” Notice that she also uses the bio to establish that she brought personal experience to the writing of her breakout mega-bestseller, The Kiss Quotient , which features a heroine on the autism spectrum.

Helen Hoang is that shy person who never talks. Until she does. And the worst things fly out of her mouth. She read her first romance novel in eighth grade and has been addicted ever since. In 2016, she was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in line with what was previously known as Asperger’s Syndrome. Her journey inspired THE KISS QUOTIENT. She currently lives in San Diego, California with her husband, two kids, and pet fish. (76 words)

9. Social Media Author Bio With One-Word Sentences.

Delaney Williams packs a whole lot of information into a short Twitter bio using one-word sentences. She also conveys a certain attitude by adding “a mother****ing Unicorn” after her name. I’m actually not sure what SUP stands for, but I think this is a really effective approach for a social media site.

Author. Advocate. Artist. BLM. Pan. Wife. Mom. SUP. Kiowa. Story collector. Book lover. Tattoo fiend. Feminist hippie, ME/MS, cancer survivor, she/they. (21 words)

10. A Self-Published Author Bio That Uses Bullet Points

Christopher Lentz ‘s bio on his website is very long, which is fine, because it’s his website! What’s the point of having a website or blog if you don’t get to write whatever you want there?

What I find interesting is his use of bullet points in a bio. I hadn’t seen anyone else do this, and I’m stealing the idea from him, so credit where credit is due. I also love the opening sentence!

A man who writes romances, a self-starter who self-publishes and a dreamer who thinks growing old should take longer.

Christopher Lentz is the acclaimed author of  Opening Doors  (biography, 2019),  My Friend Marilyn  (historica l fiction, 2018) and  The Blossom Trilogy  (historical romance). His books are about hope, second chances and outcasts overcoming obstacles. But most of all, they’re about how love changes everything. Lentz made his mark as a corporate-marketing executive before becoming a full-time storyteller.

When asked to offer a dozen things people should know about him, Lentz says he:

• Is an author who gave Marilyn Monroe a second chance
• Kissed the love of his life atop the Eiffel Tower
• Lives in a haunted Victorian house
• Earned a paycheck dressing up as Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland
• Stands in awe of lightening, thunder and his wife’s from-scratch chocolate cake
• Was born on the 6th of July, but he’s a firecracker just the same
• Loves a book that reads like a movie
• Climbed the Great Wall of China…yes, climbed, one does not just walk on it
• Snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef
• Firmly believes it isn’t hoarding if your stuff’s cool
• Survived acupuncture, cupping (which is nothing like spooning) and a spinal tap
• Discovered that life’s second chapter is the sweetest

He resides in Southern California with his high-school-sweetheart wife and family. To learn more, please visit www.blossomtrilogy.com. (227 words)

11. An Unpublished YA Fantasy Writer Bio

Mia K Rose has another example with bullet points! She notes her pronouns, Myers-Briggs type, and zodiac sign under “Classifications,” which I think is fun, even if you believe in neither! (Personally, I kind of get into both.)

Mia K Rose is a statistics and data analyst who lives in Gold Coast and, though the job may be analytical, loves the realms of fantasy. She is a member of SCBWI, QWC and Brisbane Writer’s Festival. Mia has a degree in Masters of Letters (Creative Writing) from CQUniversity.

Classifications:

• She/Her (54 words)

Do you struggle with writing an author bio? Do you have questions about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section!

And if you’d like to share your own author bio in the comments section and link to your author page on Amazon or your website, go for it. Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!

Related Posts

Share this:

15 thoughts on “ 11 good author bio examples ”.

Thank you Bryn for putting these excellent bio samples together for us. This has been really helpful.

Thanks for the kind words, Naomi! I appreciate it!

Thanks for sharing these great bios. All were engaging. I especially like the ones with a bit of humor. Thanks for letting us share our own bio. https://www.amazon.com/Judith-Gonda/e/B084KPD5D5?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1635362583&sr=1-1

Thanks, Judith—and thanks for sharing your own! I love the alliteration 🙂

I love reading BIOS and learn so much when I do. Here is mine:

Liz Boeger’s stint as a bikini model peaked in kindergarten. Her fallback career writing mysteries didn’t kick-in until she neared the mid-century mark. In between, she wrangled children, adults, and the occasional Florida panther as a teacher and school administrator. Don’t ask her about her work with the U.S. Secret Service, she’s sworn herself to secrecy.

She writes the Moccasin Cove Mystery series featuring a quirky amateur sleuth with too much empathy and wit for her own good. ChainLinked, Book1, misterio press. Book 2, AppleJacked was a 2021 Daphne du Maurier Mystery/Suspense finalist. Member of Florida Writers Association, Sisters in Crime, and Sisters in Crime Guppies. Read her writing-related rants and reflections on her Moccasin Cove Mysteries blog.

Liz, those two opening sentences are so good! This is such a great example of a bio. I’m jealous! Thanks for sharing.

Here’s the Bio from my web site.

My mother was a dragon slayer; my father, a dreamer of great dreams. I fall somewhere between, but Mama always thought I was more kin to Papa than to her.

Raised in the mountains of Colorado, I had the advantage of what some would call a disadvantaged childhood. We didn’t have a lot of what money could buy, but plenty of opportunity to develop our own ingenuity and creativity.

I studied human behavior in college right after high school, but didn’t really start to understand people or myself until I explored life with characters in my own fiction.

I eventually returned to college and earned a Bachelor’s degree from Marylhurst University.

I’ll never be a dragon slayer like my mother, but riding dragons is a different matter entirely and getting acquainted with them has led me on some amazing adventures. Want to come along?

Perhaps the first paragraph and the last would make a short bio.

I agree, the first + last would work for that! I love the invitation at the end. That’s original and so, well…inviting!

I did make an attempt to write a version of my bio in 3rd person for a query letter. It just didn’t work.

Jessie, this is awesome! I just love it. It’s entertaining and it suits you so well!

Thank you so much. I need to update mine.

The funny thing is, I need to update mine, too. 🙂

I always have a hard time writing my bio. After reading some of the examples, and stressing a lot, I came up with this.

Micheal is an eclectic minded writer. When he’s not writing, he can be found at a pool table calculating the next shot or the next story.

As an INFJ/INTJ, he has an insatiable curiosity about multiple topics including Mental Health and the surreal. He has written several articles on Medium as well as multiple fiction stories.

Thank you Micheal, this has given me inspiration after a long time of contemplation. Now my first book will soon be dressed with a bio!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Discover more from BRYN DONOVAN

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

limited Time offer

50% off on all services, redeem your coupon: gbw50.

Turn your Biography into an Inspirational Book

Do you have a success story that you think might benefit others? Hire a writer for your biography now and get it published!

• Dedicated ghostwriters
• 700+ books written
• More than five years of experience
• Exemplary services

AVAIL 50% off

Featured biography writers for hire.

At ghost book writers, we have a dynamic team of writers having expertise in a myriad of writing services. Our biography writers are adept at providing our clients with the best biography writing services online and assisting you in making your work stand out among all the emerging writers and books in today’s era.

Highly Experienced Team of Professional Biography Writers

Our vast team of professional biography writers acknowledges the significance of the impression that is left by a powerful biography on the reader. We work our utmost to leave the same, if not better, impact on the reader. Our writers, who have a knack for biography writing, are dedicated to providing you the ideal connectivity with the reader through their professional biography writing services. Hiring a biography writer online may be risky, but with our extensive experience, you can entirely rely on us to write your biography with elegance and confidence. We ensure to transform your biography into a cherish-able piece for you and an amusing one for the reader.

Years of Experience

Books Written

American Writers

Hire a writer for biography

Your words, your voice, your biography; Just written by our expert biography writers.

Let Us Write Your Book.

A Trustable Name for Adept Biography Writers

To hire a writer for personal biography is a decision that may require some introspection. Our writers are proficient at maintaining a perfect balance between professionalism and frankness in your biography.

To allow the reader not only to perceive you as a successful personality, but a human being that they can relate to, and this is done by addressing your biography in a manner that shows you in a favorable light while keeping the reader engaged from the very first word. We promise to create a lifelong connection between you, our client, and the reader.

We rank among the top tech companies that provide biography writing services in the following niches:

• Scholarly chronicles
• Life history writing
• Intellectual biography
• Memoir biography
• Narrative biography

Our Writers

Meet the stars of our writing team who are always pushing and setting new standards for us as well as the industry. They have stellar writing experiences under their belt working with bestseller authors and featured by the biggest news outlets and forums.

Esther Rowe

Esther is one of our most emotionally intelligent writers. She deconstructs feelings of her characters so eloquently that it leaves even our editors waiting for the next chapter to quench their curiosity about what’s going to happen next. Her empathetic nature gives her an edge and enables her to not just understand the client’s demands but really feel where they’re coming from. Her abilities shine in storytelling whether they’re fantasy fiction, nonfiction biographies, narratives, screenplays, or novels. Hire her as your ghostwriter today.

Rosalie Guzman

Rosalie is the most versatile writer you will ever see. She is young, but exceptionally gifted with words and has a magical instinct that is reflected in her work. Her multifaceted profile showcases prized work in songwriting, rap and hip-hop, speeches, scripts, fanfics, short stories, flash fiction, and even comics. What’s surprising is that her flow from rhyming extends into the biographies and memoirs that she is always so eager to work on. Rosalie’s words are almost always trending in the media, and we feel proud to know that it was one of our own who wrote that.

If there’s anyone who can make a person see with closed eyes, it’s our wizard, Weber. He is an expert in drawing detailed pictures in the heads of his readers and animate them with nothing but words on a page. His descriptions are extraordinarily visual, with a unique ability to change complete scenarios, all within a single sentence. Weber’s words that drop like hammers have earned him a celestial reputation amongst our clients so he stays booked in advance. Through our forum, hire him today to reserve an exclusive spot on his writing schedule.

Process of Biography Writing

Order details.

Reserve your spot by filling a simple brief form, and be instantly welcomed by one of our cordial project managers, who will take in all the information you have to share about your book.

Outline Draft

The best candidate, according to the skills required for your book, is selected, who thoroughly studies the concept from available information and crafts out of it the outline for a book for you to approve.

First Chapter Approval

The writer then begins writing the book with a captivating opener that will hopefully keep the readers hooked till the last page is turned. If the author is satisfied with the first chapter, the book is continued according to the previously approved outline.

Editing & Proofreading

Once the entire book is approved by the author, it is sent to multiple members of our team of professionals. These professionals carry out thorough proofreading and make any editings where required to ensure the book is flawless.

Formatting, Typesetting & Designing

Once the complete manuscript is approved by the client, we format it to publishing standards, give it a professional look and tasteful flavor with fonts, graphical details, and cover designs.

Publishing & Promotion

Finally, when the final manuscript has been approved for publishing, we publish your book following your desired format and execute a personalized marketing and promotional strategy.

Find answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions

What is a biography.

A biography, literally, is an account of a person’s life written by someone else and an autobiography if it’s self-written. Biographies include all the life events of the person, which may be personal, professional, work, relationships, hardships, successes, and death.

What is biography writing?

Biography writing takes the life of an individual as the subject of the story. Biography writing entails an immense command over words and character development of the person. Linking the individual’s personal and professional life together in an exciting manner for the reader to perhaps inspire them accounts for biography writing.

What type of writing is a biography?

A narrative of an individual’s life, either written by themselves or by another writer, is a biography. Biographical works are mostly non-fiction, although some writers may use fiction to give it more depth and to develop the reader’s interest.

Are you writing a biography about yourself?

Writing a biography about yourself might both be a complicated or more salutary task since no one knows about your life better than you do. However, it may get tricky since your perspective on yourself may clash with another person. We always perceive ourselves differently than others do, and this is a crucial factor while writing a biography about yourself.

In order to start writing a biography about yourself, you can start off by drafting a series of events that occurred in your life in a chronological manner. You can elaborate on the ones that played a more significant role in determining who you are and fill any hiatuses in between to develop a timeline. Make sure the timeline depicts an attribute development, as doing so transcends your biography.

Our Testimonials

Very creating and insightful work, made my ramblings make sense! I loved the added details and the way my characters were brought to life. The writer was prompt in her responses and catered to all last-minute adjustments patiently. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it. 100% recommended.

Joseph Boucher

#1 New York times-bestselling author Over 1 million copies sold!

I rarely write reviews but this goes to the ghostwriter I hired. The process, from the selection of the writer to the final submission of my book, went smooth. I` loved how he stayed engaged and concerned about my story. Thank you for giving an interpersonal touch to the story. Very quick to answer all queries. I am very satisfied with the quality of much. Way to go.

Annabell Ison

#1-ranked agent on Publishers Marketplace

This website is the best to hire a ghostwriter for any book! I hired a book ghostwriter thinking it would be a lengthy process but to my surprise, they delivered my book in no time. Great work is done! It felt as if the writer had read my mind. Wonderful. I also got my website made by them. Thank you.

Authors include Rachel Hollis, Tilman Fertitta, and John C Maxwell

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Best biographies and memoirs of 2021

Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreet

In a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True (John Murray) traces her path from cherished child of an Oxford GP to Bafta-winning actor to chat-show sofa staple, in a raucously indiscreet memoir replete with fruity tales of sexual experimentation, tricky co-stars and Olympic-level farting. And Bob Mortimer’s winningly heartfelt And Away… (Gallery) reveals the brilliant highs and terrible lows of his childhood as the “irritating runt” of four brothers, his initial career as a solicitor and subsequent reinvention as a celebrated comic alongside his partner in crime, Vic Reeves.

Themes of identity and belonging underpin Beautiful Country (Viking), Qian Julie Wang’s elegantly affecting account of her move from China to New York where she lived undocumented and under threat of deportation, and Nadia Owusu’s powerful Aftershocks (Sceptre), in which the author recalls a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a volatile Armenian-American mother and a Ghanaian father, a United Nations official who died when she was 13. Both books tell remarkable stories of displacement, heartache and resilience.

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (Bodley Head) is another tale of extraordinary resilience, as the artist Ai Weiwei vividly reflects on his own life and that of his father, who was a poet. Both men fell foul of the Chinese authorities: Ai’s father, Ai Qing, was exiled to a place nicknamed “Little Siberia”, where he lived with his young son in a dug-out pit with a roof made from mud and branches, while Ai himself was imprisoned in 2011 for 11 weeks on spurious tax charges. Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin) is a beautifully written account of life under a crumbling Stalinist system in Albania and the shock and chaos of what came next. In telling her story and examining the political systems in which she was raised, the author and LSE professor asks tough questions about the nature of freedom.

In Maybe I Don’t Belong Here (Bluebird), the actor David Harewood lays bare his struggles with racial injustice and mental illness, and shows how these things are connected. Harewood’s childhood was punctuated by racist abuse; later, as he tried to get his career off the ground, he was bullied by colleagues and critics. At 23, he had a psychotic breakdown during which it took six police officers to restrain him, and was dispatched to a psychiatric ward where, he learns from his hospital records, he was described as a “large black man” and administered drugs at four times the recommended dose. His recollections of his unravelling, treatment and recovery are acutely drawn.

Huma Abedin’s electrifying memoir Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (Simon & Schuster) grapples with her multiple identities as a woman with Indian parents, who was born in Michigan and raised in Saudi Arabia. It is also a brave and unflinching account of her job as aide to Hillary Clinton and her years as the wife of Anthony Weiner , the congressman at the centre of a sexting scandal that landed him in prison, prompted an investigation by child services and ultimately derailed Clinton’s presidential campaign. Of the night Abedin learned her work emails had been discovered on her husband’s laptop, which would lead to the FBI reopening its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, she recalls: “I wrote one line in my notebook. ‘I do not know how I am going to survive this. Help me God.’”

The actor Brian Cox lost his father to pancreatic cancer when he was eight years old, his mother battled with mental illness and his childhood was one of almost Dickensian poverty. But you won’t find self-pity in his meandering but amusingly irreverent memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Quercus). Instead, we get a whistlestop tour of his working life, during which he takes entertaining pot-shots at Johnny Depp (“overrated”), Steven Seagal (“ludicrous”) and Edward Norton (“a pain in the arse”).

Finally, two terrific biographies. Frances Wilson’s smart and scholarly Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury) paints a vivid picture of a brilliant writer who was “censored and worshipped” in his lifetime, and remained furious at the world and at those not sufficiently cognisant of his genius.

And Paula Byrne’s The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (William Collins), about the British postwar novelist whom Philip Larkin compared to Jane Austen, is a touching and revealing portrait of a flawed romantic and a free spirit.

• Autobiography and memoir
• Best books of 2021
• Best books of the year
• Biography books

Most viewed

50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

Sarah Ullery

Sarah suffers from chronic sarcasm, and an unhealthy aversion to noise. She loves to read, and would like to do nothing else, but stupid real life makes her go to work. She lives in the middle of a cornfield and shares a house with two spoiled dogs and a ton of books.

View All posts by Sarah Ullery

I live vicariously through the lives and stories of the writers I love and admire. Sometimes I read biographies of authors whose lives parallel aspects of my own; small lives that eventually produce great art. Lives like Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, or Penelope Fitzgerald who didn’t write her first book until she was 58.

I like to read biographies that share a commonality with my own life, but like the best fiction, I’d rather be transported to worlds with characters that are larger than life. Lives that are tumultuous, scandal-ridden, and full of perils. Lives that are exciting and rich and full of conflict. Lives that produce stories like Native Son , The Bell Jar, Lolita , A Rage in Harlem , or Frankenstein .

I also like to read about the lives of the authors of some of my favorite books—Iris Murdoch and The Sea, The Sea , Philip K. Dick and A Scanner Darkly , Mary Shelley and Frankenstein , Penelope Fitzgerald and The Blue Flower— but this can be a perilous exercise. Some authors were pretty terrible people, which can ruin your perception of their writing. But like most of us, artists and writers lived lives rife with nuance, and through even-handed, well-researched biographies, readers can take a peek into the minds that have created some of the stories we love.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall

The supposed “American Brontës,” the three Peabody sisters influenced the thinking of writers like Thoreau and Hawthorne. The youngest sister, Sophia, married Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story of the Peabody sisters and are searching for more stories about American Romanticism and the role women played in the literary scene at the time, pick up Megan Marshall’s other book, about Margaret Fuller.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes  by Janet Malcolm

This is a biography of the biographies that have been written about Sylvia Plath. It tries to correct the myth surrounding Plath and Ted Hughes.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft died a week after giving birth to Mary Shelley, but in many ways, despite not knowing each other, their lives were very alike. A wonderful book about the mother who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women  and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein .

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Mark Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood . “ —from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight

This is the most recent biography of Frederick Douglass. It’s a wonderfully rendered story of a complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson

I’m not a huge fan of Little Women — I find Louisa May Alcott’s life much more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is the pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled her home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her girlfriend in Paris in the 1920s. While in Paris, she became a correspondent for the New Yorker .

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux

Audre Lorde did not live a quiet life, and this biography relishes in the myth and power of Lorde as an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like to be married to the author of Lolita ? The story of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, if you’ve never read any of her other biographies, is a master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

This has all the bad: racism, sexism, abuse, sexual assault—so I warned you! It’s a hard story. I hesitate to call it a romance—maybe there was love, but the relationship between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This is a relatively short biography, but it certainly packs a punch!

The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini

I’ve always been hesitant to read Jean Rhys’s most famous book,  Wide Sargasso Sea , because I’ve always loved Jane Eyre . But recently I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and I thought, God, Rochester is an ass. Maybe it’s time for Wide Sargasso Sea .

Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence P. Jackson

Chester B. Himes is probably most famous for his crime noir series the Harlem Cycle , which starts with A Rage in Harlem . Himes was arrested for armed robbery and spent almost ten years in prison, but while in prison his articles were featured in publications like Esquire . Plagued by racism in America, Himes moved to Paris where he became famous for his Harlem series.

Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife to the poet Percy Shelley, who drowned when she was only 24. The idea for Frankenstein was born on a stormy night as a group of writers were telling scary stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography by David A. Leeming

David Leeming was friends with Baldwin for 25 years before writing his biography. This is a wonderful glimpse into the life of one of the preeminent voices of African American literature in the world.

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

A man who created creepy comics and lived with a horde of cats and thousands of books automatically sounds sounds like the kind of person whose biography I want to read.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both a poet and visual artist, Mina Loy moved in the most influential circles of her time. She bumped shoulders with Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp—to name a few.

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

A great selling point for a biography is when the subject is described as a sexual rebel. I’m also a sucker for a story about a dysfunctional English family, which Rebecca West famously wrote with The Fountain Overflows .

The Brontë Myth by Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d rather read about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, or the Peabodys, because I think the Brontës are a bit overrated…but like the Plath biography, which was a biography of her biographies, this book tries to demystify the myth that surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

Best known for her sexual exploits, diaries, and relationships with leading intellectuals of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the sum total of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

A biography collected from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s best known for her philosophical writing on existentialism and her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

A well balanced biography about a woman whose life is as well known as her books; still, you’ll find some tidbits in this biography that you’ve probably never known, and might come to see Woolf in a new light—for better or worse. Hermione Lee is a master biographer.

Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

A writer whose work has seen a resurgence in recent years—Clarice Lispector was born in post–War World I Ukraine, and emigrated to Brazil in her early years. Her writing and life is steeped in mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

It’s hard to find biographies about black female writers. Especially writers from the 20th and 19th centuries. Jane Crow was a lawyer, writer, and civil rights crusader. She’s an example of a woman we should know more about.

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were more biographies about Flannery O’Connor, the master of the short story. This is a good biography, but I want more.

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Sarah Bakewell

Four hundred years ago Montaigne wrote The Essays , where he tried to answer the universal question: How to live? This biography explores his questions and answers in a historical context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth story of Ralph Ellison’s life. He was born in 1913 in the south and moved to New York City in 1936. He had a grandiose personality that was sometimes at odds with other writers and politically active intellectuals of his time.

A Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s life is told in three volumes. The first relates Hughes’s early years as he traveled the world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s HUGE. I bought it after reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s biography in which it is mentioned that Edith Wharton was in Paris at the same time as Millay. But while Millay struggled at times with finances, Wharton was born to privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In high school we had to choose a book from a list of 100 American classics to read every month. Their Eyes Were Watching God was the best book I read from that list. Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly is a favorite book. A life as strange as the stories he wrote: “ It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane .”

Richard Wright: The Life and Times by Hazel Rowley

This powerful story about the author of Native Son weaves Wright’s own writing and quotations into the biography.

The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard B. Sewall

There are a lot of biographies of Emily Dickinson, but this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 before publishing her first book, which makes me love her. She’s best known for writing The Blue Flower , The Bookshop , and Offshore .

Katherine Anne Porter: The Life of an Artist by Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Pale Rider” is one of my favorite short stories. A woman is in bed with a fever during the influenza epidemic, and in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries about her fiancé who is a soldier fighting in the first world war. The author, Katherine Anne Porter, lived a life that was no less compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A woman driven mad by her husband’s lecherous appropriation of her personality and writing. Confession: I’m not a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t pain me to discover he was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: A Life by Peter J. Conradi

The Sea, The Sea is one of my favorite books. Charles Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, and totally realized as a man coming to the end of his life, but fighting like hell to delay the breakdown into old age. Iris Murdoch at first imagined herself to be the next George Eliot, but ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote extensively about her own life in memoirs like The Gastronomical Me and  How to Cook a Wolf , in which she writes about food and its relationship with life and love.

Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White

Alice Walker was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple . This might be the only biography on the list whose subject is still alive, which brings a new dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t be all rainbows and unicorns if you’re writing stories like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle .  This is a biography about the woman, the books, and the times in which they existed.

The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin

Li Bai was a Chinese poet who lived a long, long time ago, but whose work and legacy is still greatly revered today in China.

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

My favorite literary biography. Edna St. Vincent Millay was fashioned as a modern Sappho, and a holdover of Victorian era poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But despite her writing style, her personal life was very modern.

Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The life of the illustrious war correspondent Martha Gellhorn who reported from the frontlines of most of the biggest wars of the 20th century. A fascinating figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best known for her play  A Raisin in the Sun , Lorraine Hansberry counted James Baldwin and Nina Simone as friends. She was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, she joined one of the first lesbian organizations, and challenged JFK to take a wider stance on civil rights. Why don’t we hear more about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson

To read his books and short stories, it would be easy to imagine that Borges’s life could be stranger than fiction. But this biography focuses on the human side of Borges and brings new light to his work and thinking.

Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida B. Wells was an African American reporter who investigated and fought to end lynching in the south. This is the story of a brilliant and fearless reporter, and an indictment against the United States.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I’ve never read Little House on the Prairie . I prefer reading about the rocky life story of the author behind the books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, an autobiography. I included it because I don’t think anyone should try to retell Maya Angelou’s story. Her telling, and poetry, should be the last word.

The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon

A biography about the author of the morbid and gothic fairytales like The Bloody Chamber and gothic novels like The Magic Toyshop .

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes about her early life in New York City when she moved in social circles that included James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. A vibrant city, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote the memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , which became the most well-read slave narrative written by a woman. Jean Fagan Yellin expands on Harriet Jacobs life, and the world into which she escaped.

Need more? Check out these articles too:

7 Great New Literary Biographies for Your TBR

50 Must- Read Biographies

You Might Also Like

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was an English author famous for an array of works like 'Just So Stories,' 'If' and 'The Jungle Book.' He received the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.

(1865-1936)

Who Was Rudyard Kipling?

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865 and educated in England but returned to India in 1882. A decade later, Kipling married Caroline Balestier and settled in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he wrote The Jungle Book (1894), among a host of other works that made him hugely successful. Kipling was the recipient of the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 1936.

Early Years

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay (now called Mumbai), India. At the time of his birth, his parents, John and Alice, were recent arrivals in India as part of the British Empire. The family lived well, and Kipling was especially close to his mother. His father, an artist, was the head of the Department of Architectural Sculpture at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Bombay.

For Kipling, India was a wondrous place. Along with his younger sister, Alice, he reveled in exploring the local markets with his nanny. He learned the language and, in this bustling city of Anglos, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews, connected with the country and its culture.

However, at the age of six, Kipling's life was torn apart when his mother, wanting her son to receive a formal British education, sent him to Southsea, England, where he attended school and lived with a foster family named the Holloways.

These were hard years for Kipling. Mrs. Holloway was a brutal woman who quickly grew to despise her foster son. She beat and bullied the youngster, who also struggled to fit in at school. His only break from the Holloways came in December, when Kipling, who told nobody of his problems at school or with his foster parents, traveled to London to stay with relatives for the month.

By the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A visitor to his home saw his condition and immediately contacted his mother, who rushed back to England and rescued her son from the Holloways. To help relax his mind, Alice took her son on an extended vacation and then placed him in a new school in Devon. There, Kipling flourished and discovered his talent for writing, eventually becoming editor of the school newspaper.

The Young Writer

In 1882, Kipling returned to India. It was a powerful time in the young writer's life. The sights and sounds, even the language, which he'd believed he'd forgotten, rushed back to him upon his arrival.

Kipling made his home with his parents in Lahore and, with his father's help, found a job with a local newspaper. The job offered Kipling a good excuse to discover his surroundings. Nighttime, especially, proved to be valuable for the young writer. Kipling was a man of two worlds, somebody who was accepted by both his British counterparts and the native population. Suffering from insomnia, he roamed the city streets and gained access to the brothels and opium dens that rarely opened their doors to common Englishmen.

Kipling's experiences during this time formed the backbone for a series of stories he began to write and publish. They were eventually assembled into a collection of 40 short stories called Plain Tales From the Hills , which gained wide popularity in England.

In 1889, seven years after he had left England, Kipling returned to its shores in hopes of leveraging the modest amount of celebrity his book of short stories had earned him. In London, he met Wolcott Balestier, an American agent and publisher who quickly became one of Kipling's great friends and supporters. The two men grew close and even traveled together to the United States, where Balestier introduced his fellow writer to his childhood home of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Life in America

Around this time, Kipling's star power started to grow. In addition to Plain Tales From the Hills , Kipling published a second collection of short stories, Wee Willie Winkie (1888), and American Notes (1891), which chronicled his early impressions of America. In 1892, he also published the poetry work Barrack-Room Ballads .

Kipling's friendship with Balestier changed the young writer's life. He soon got to know Balestier's family, in particular, his sister, Carrie. The two appeared to be just friends, but during the Christmas holiday in 1891, Kipling, who had traveled back to India to see his family, received an urgent cable from Carrie. Wolcott had died suddenly of typhoid fever and Carrie needed Kipling to be with her.

Kipling rushed back to England, and within eight days of his return, the two married at a small ceremony attended by American writer Henry James.

Fame With 'Jungle Book' and 'Naulahka'

Following their wedding, the Kiplings set off on an adventurous honeymoon that took them to Canada and then Japan. But as was often the case in Kipling's life, good fortune was accompanied by hard luck. During the Japanese leg of the journey, Kipling learned that his bank, the New Oriental Banking Corporation, had failed. The Kiplings were broke.

Left only with what they had with them, the young couple decided to travel to Brattleboro, where much of Carrie's family still resided. Kipling fell in love with life in the states, and the two decided to settle there. In the spring of 1891, the Kiplings purchased from Carrie's brother Beatty a piece of land just north of Brattleboro and had a large home constructed, which they called the Naulahka.

Kipling seemed to adore his new life, which soon saw the Kiplings welcome their first child, a daughter named Josephine (born in 1893), and a second daughter, Elsie (born in 1896). A third child, John, was born in 1897, after the Kiplings had left America.

As a writer, too, Kipling flourished. His work during this time included The Jungle Book (1894), The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (1892) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), among others. Kipling was delighted to be around children—a characteristic that was apparent in his writing. His tales enchanted girls and boys all over the English-speaking world.

But life again took another dramatic turn for the family when Kipling had a major falling out with Beatty. The two men quarreled, and when Kipling made noise about taking his brother-in-law to court because of threats Beatty had made to his life, newspapers across America broadcast the spat on their front pages.

The gentle Kipling was embarrassed by the attention and regretful of how his celebrity had worked against him. As a result, in 1896, he and his family left Vermont for a new life back in England.

Family Tragedy

In the winter of 1899, Carrie, who was homesick, decided that the family needed to travel back to New York to see her mother. But the journey across the Atlantic was brutal, and New York was frigid. Both Kipling and young Josephine arrived in the states gravely ill with pneumonia. For days, the world kept careful watch on the state of Kipling's health as newspapers reported on his condition.

Kipling did recover, but his beloved Josephine did not. The family waited until Kipling was strong enough to hear the news, but even then, Carrie could not bear to break it to him, asking his publisher, Frank Doubleday, to do so instead. To those who knew him, it was clear that Kipling never recovered from Josephine's death. He vowed never to return to America.

Over time, Kipling would become known for harboring a sense of English imperialism and views on certain cultures that would draw much objection and be seen as disturbingly racist. Yet even as Kipling grew more rigid in his viewpoints as he got older, aspects of his earlier work would still be celebrated.

Life in England

The turn of the century saw the publication of another novel that would become quite popular, Kim (1901), which featured a youth's adventure on the Grand Trunk Road. In 1902, the Kiplings bought a large estate in Sussex known as Bateman's. The property had been erected in 1634, and for the private Kiplings, it offered the kind of isolation they now cherished. Kipling revered the new home, with its lush gardens and classic details. "Behold us," he wrote in a November 1902 letter, "lawful owners of a grey stone, lichened house—A.D. 1634 over the door—beamed, paneled, with old oak staircase and all untouched and unfaked."

At Bateman's, Kipling found some of the happiness he thought he had forever lost following the death of Josephine. He was dedicated as ever to his writing, something Carrie helped ensure. Adopting the role of the head of the household, she held reporters at bay when they came calling and issued directions to both staff and children.

Kipling's books during his years at Bateman's included Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debts and Credits (1926), Thy Servant a Dog (1930) and Limits and Renewals (1932).

The same year he purchased Bateman's, Kipling also published his Just So Stories , which were greeted with wide acclaim. The book itself was in part a tribute to his late daughter, for whom Kipling had originally crafted the stories as he put her to bed. The book's name had, in fact, come from Josephine, who told her father he had to repeat each tale as he always had, or "just so," as Josephine often said.

World War I

As much of Europe braced for war with Germany, Kipling proved to be an ardent supporter of the fight. In 1915, he even traveled to France to report on the war from the trenches. He also encouraged his son, John, to enlist. Since Josephine's death, Kipling and John had grown tremendously close.

Wanting to help his son enlist, Kipling drove John to several different military recruiters. But plagued with the same eyesight problems his father had, John was repeatedly turned down. Finally, Kipling made use of his connections and managed to get John enlisted with the Irish Guard as a second lieutenant.

In October 1915, the Kiplings received word that John had gone missing in France. The news devastated the couple. Kipling, perhaps feeling guilty about his push to make his son a soldier, set off for France to find John. But nothing ever came of the search, and John's body was never recovered. A distraught and drained Kipling returned to England to once again mourn the loss of a child.

Final Years and Death

While Kipling continued to write for the next two decades, he never again returned to the bright, cheery children's tales he had once so delighted in crafting. Health issues eventually caught up to both Kipling and Carrie, the result of age and grief.

Over his last few years, Kipling suffered from a painful ulcer that eventually took his life on January 18, 1936. Kipling's ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey in Poets' Corner next to the graves of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens .

Disney Adaptations

Kipling's work entered the realm of mass popular entertainment in the Disney film adaptation of The Jungle Book , a 1967 animated musical loosely based on the original tale. A live-action/CGI version of the movie was later released in 2016, with direction by Jon Favreau and the vocal talents of Idris Elba , Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong'o and Scarlett Johansson .

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Rudyard Kipling
• Birth Year: 1865
• Birth date: December 30, 1865
• Birth City: Bombay
• Birth Country: India
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Rudyard Kipling was an English author famous for an array of works like 'Just So Stories,' 'If' and 'The Jungle Book.' He received the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn
• Death Year: 1936
• Death date: January 18, 1936
• Death City: Middlesex Hospital, London
• Death Country: England

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

• Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Famous British People

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales

Where in the World Is Kate Middleton?

Christopher Nolan

Emily Blunt

Jane Goodall

Princess Kate Is Seen for First Time Since Surgery

King Charles III

Howard Carter, King Tut's Tomb, and a Deadly Curse

Kensington Palace Shares an Update on Kate

Who’s Who in the British Line of Succession

Follow to get new release updates, special offers (including promotional offers) and improved recommendations.

About the author

Tom Briggs is an engineer and military veteran who can’t stop dreaming of futuristic possibilities and learned long ago that writing stories works better than trying to explain how cool those ideas were. He’s busy right now working on his next book, but you can always contact him through his website at tombriggsbooks.com.

Most popular

or $4.99 to buy

Customers also bought items by

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Books | How an internship at LA’s Chinese American…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Food & Drink
• Amusement Parks
• Theater & Arts

Things To Do

Books | how an internship at la’s chinese american museum launched a new anna may wong book, arcadia native katie gee salisbury is the author of 'not your china doll,' a new biography out from dutton..

Katie Gee Salisbury was a 19-year-old intern at Los Angeles’ Chinese American Museum when she first heard of film star and TV actress Anna May Wong.

“I was totally taken aback that there could have been an Asian American movie star in the 1920s and ‘30s and that I also had never heard of her,” Salisbury recalls on a video call from Brooklyn, where she is now based. “I’m half Chinese. I grew up in an Asian American community in Arcadia and I was like, if she was that famous, how come no one is talking about her?”

SEE ALSO : Get the free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, books, authors and more

Changing the narrative

Salisbury began what would become years of research into the star’s life and work. The culmination of that labor is “Not Your China Doll,” her biography of Anna May Wong, which has just been published by Dutton.

“When you look up Anna May Wong’s life, there’s a shorter narrative, a very pat narrative that gets told about her career,” Salisbury explains. “That she became very famous, was very beautiful, had roles in some of these huge blockbusters, like ‘The Thief of Bagdad’ in 1924, but Hollywood wouldn’t put her in leading roles because of her race.”

She adds that the story often ends with Wong losing the lead role in “The Good Earth” to German American actress Luise Rainer. But Salisbury thought that there had to be more to it.

Katie Gee Salisbury was a 19-year-old intern at Los Angeles’ Chinese American Museum when she first heard of film star and TV actress Anna May Wong, who is the subject of Salisbury’s new book, “Not Your China Doll.” (Photo by Jmar Teran / Courtesy of Dutton)

Chinese American actress Anna May Wong is shown in this undated photo. (The Associated Press)

Anna May Wong, the Chinese American actress whose Hollywood film career spanned three decades, died of a heart attack at her Santa Monica home on Feb. 4, 1961. This photo is from 1956. (AP Photo)

Chinese American actress Anna May Wong is shown in this undated photo. (AP Photo)

And there was.

“When you really start to look at her career, it spanned four decades,” she says. “She worked in almost every medium. She went on to do so many groundbreaking things, after ‘The Good Earth” disappointment.”

In fact, Wong’s filmography is packed. She starred in crime films like “Daughter of Shanghai” and “King of Chinatown” in the late 1930s. Salisbury points to “Daughter of Shanghai,” where Wong and Philip Ahn play the film’s heroes who have a romantic relationship, which was groundbreaking at a time when Asian Americans were often bypassed for romantic leads.

“It’s incredibly mind-blowing that that happened in 1937 and then you don’t see it again for decades,” says Salisbury.

By the early 1950s, she had her own television series, “The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong,” playing an art dealer who solves mysteries. Wong continued working until her death at the age of 56, right before she was set to begin rehearsals for “Flower Drum Song,” the 1961 film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

“It’s so impressive how she continually found workarounds and new ideas that worked, that people were interested in,” says Salisbury. “Towards the end of her career, she had no issue with shifting to character roles, where she wasn’t the leading actress anymore, but she played a lot of interesting roles on television.”

A new generation of fans

As Salisbury notes, Wong’s work is making its way to more contemporary viewers, and there’s increased interest in the star. Last year saw the publication of both a nonfiction book about the star, “Daughter of the Dragon” by Santa Barbara-based author Yunte Huang and an autobiographical novel based on her life, “The Brightest Star,” by Gail Tsukiyama. A biopic scripted by David Henry Hwang is also said to be in the works. The U.S. Mint has even put her likeness on a quarter .

While some of the films are lost, there is still much for fans to see.

“Yes, a lot of the early short silent films are missing, but a good number of them are available,” says Salisbury. She credits the fan-run YouTube channel “The Gallery of Anna May Wong,” which has uploaded some of her more difficult-to-find appearances.

During her research, Salisbury traveled to London to see 35-millimeter prints of some of Wong’s European films. However, these are becoming easier to access, too. “Pavement Butterfly,” the 1929 German film in which Wong starred, was recently restored and has had a few screenings.

Salisbury is hopeful that Wong’s 1928 film “Song,” a German-British co-production, will be restored soon as well.

“I would say ‘Song’ and ‘Pavement Butterfly’ are her best films and almost no one has seen them because they just weren’t available in the U.S. and they didn’t really translate as well,” she says. “They were made in Europe and people in Europe loved them and they would be brought to the U.S. and screened for a week and that was it. They kind of disappeared after that.”

Amongst the still-missing work from Wong’s career is her 1951 television series.

“The story is that Dumont television went bankrupt and didn’t want to store all the things that they had in their catalog, so supposedly somebody dumped everything into the East River in New York,” Salisbury, adding that fans are hopeful that the series will be found someday.

The struggle for success

In her book, Salisbury illustrates how Wong’s struggles in Hollywood weren’t the result of what audiences wanted to see.

“I do think it comes down to who is at the top of these studios and these decisions that they want to make,” she says. “Of course, they would say, we’re making decisions based on what we think people want, but then the people are telling you that they want Anna May Wong and you’re not putting her in the types of movies that she can succeed in.”

And that’s something that remains the same in Hollywood, says Salisbury.

“Who is making decisions in Hollywood really determines the types of films that get made, the types of stories that are told.”

• Newsroom Guidelines
• Report an Error

More in Books

Books | Katya Apekina’s family escaped Russia. Her novel ‘Mother Doll’ hears its ghosts in LA

Books | Kate DiCamillo talks about healing, love and her new middle-grade novel ‘Ferris’

Books | For 50 years, Frank Johnson worked in secret. Finally, you can see the results.

Books | Why Tommy Orange says the ‘epic’ survival of Native people fuels ‘Wandering Stars’

The 'Queen of Jazz,' Ella Fitzgerald's legacy is celebrated in new book

How did Ella Fitzgerald become the legend she was?

That’s the question author Judith Tick asks and answers in her new biography on the famed vocalist, “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song," our March selection for Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.

Jazz and history buffs know about the young Ella Fitzgerald’s first nervous performance at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater . The new book marks that pivotal moment in the life of the would-be dancer and many new details in the first full-scaled biography since the singer’s death nearly thirty years ago.

Tick describes Fitzgerald's legacy as a duality: "She could sing all kinds of songs... she could go on all kinds of television programs and uplift people around her. And yet, at the same time, her humility and her ordinariness shows us the full dimensions of a great personality."

From turning a nursery rhyme into a classic jazz tune to perfecting improvisational singing known as scatting, Ella Fitzgerald’s talent led her to become one of America’s cultural icons.

Judith Tick , Professor emeritus of music history at Boston’s Northeastern University. She is the author of “Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song.”

Explore Topics:

More local news.

What’s powering the Roslindale thrift shop that funds the nation’s oldest child welfare agency

34 years after Gardner heist, the museum's director of security is still on the case

To keep a Mission Hill nursing home open, lawmakers call for government intervention

'The most moving experience I've ever been through': Auschwitz exhibition arrives in Boston

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Akira Toriyama, Creator of ‘Dragon Ball,’ Dies at 68

His popular manga inspired numerous television, film and video game adaptations, reaching fans far beyond Japan’s borders.

By John Yoon and Kiuko Notoya

Akira Toriyama, one of Japan’s leading comics authors, whose manga and anime franchise “Dragon Ball” achieved worldwide success with its mix of comedic characters and rousing martial arts battles, died on March 1. He was 68.

His death was confirmed on Friday in a statement by his manga and design production company, Bird Studio, and Capsule Corporation Tokyo. The statement said the cause was acute subdural hematoma, a condition in which blood collects between the skull and brain. It did not say where he died.

Mr. Toriyama’s body of work, which also includes “Dr. Slump” and “Sand Land,” is recognizable far beyond Japan’s borders, having influenced generations of manga artists and cartoonists. The studio said he had several projects in the works at his death.

His best-known work, “Dragon Ball,” follows a young boy named Son Goku who embarks on a journey to collect the seven magical orbs that summon a wish-granting dragon. Since its creation in the 1980s, it has spanned 42 volumes, sold millions of copies worldwide and become one of the most famous manga, inspiring television, film and video game adaptations.

Throughout his career, Mr. Toriyama did not care if his work did anything besides entertaining its readers, he said in a 2013 interview with the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. He was, he suggested, unlike “other manga artists concerned about conveying didactic messages.”

“The role of my manga,” he said, “is to be a work of entertainment through and through.”

Akira Toriyama was born on April 5, 1955, in Kiyosu, Japan, according to local news media . He studied design at a technology and engineering high school in Aichi Prefecture. After graduating, he worked as a designer for an advertising company in Nagoya.

He left his job after a few years and started drawing manga at 23. His first manga, an action and adventure comic called “Wonder Island,” was published in 1978.

He gained popularity with the serialization of “Dr. Slump” from 1980 to 1984, a science-fiction manga about an android girl known for her childlike personality and superhuman strength. It was adapted for television as an anime series.

Mr. Toriyama’s absurd concepts and sense of caricature “sparked a real joyful hysteria” in Japan, Matthieu Pinon and Laurent Lefebvre wrote in “A History of Modern Manga” (2023).

In 1982, Mr. Toriyama married a former manga artist who published under the pen name Nachi Mikami, Mainichi Shimbun reported. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available, but local news media reports say he is survived by his wife and children.

When “Dragon Ball” was first published in 1984, it was an immediate hit, becoming one of the best-selling manga series of all time. It sold more than 260 million copies worldwide, according to Toei Animation , the studio that produced the anime adaptation.

“Dragon Ball” was serialized in the Japanese magazine Weekly Shonen Jump until 1995. In the year after the series ended, the magazine lost about one million of its six million readers, according to “A History of Modern Manga.” The story lived on through anime like “Dragon Ball Z” and through video games. Mr. Toriyama also designed the characters for the Dragon Quest video game series.

A prolific manga artist, Mr. Toriyama did not necessarily have an appetite for the genre as a reader. “I have always had a hard time reading manga, including my own work,” he said in a 2018 interview with Kiyosu City Public Library.

He led a private life and gave few interviews. In one, in 2013 with the Japanese singer and actress Shoko Nakagawa, he said he did not even share all his work with his family.

“To tell you the truth, no one in my family has ever seen ‘Dragon Ball,’” he said, laughing. “I am also a hikikomori,” he added, using the Japanese word for a recluse.

But his stories continued to reach fans around the world years after their creation.

After “Dragon Ball,” Mr. Toriyama wrote single-volume manga, including “Cowa!” “Kajika” and “Jaco the Galactic Patrolman.” “Sand Land,” published in 2000, was made into a movie in 2023. Its anime version is scheduled to be released in the spring on Disney+, along with a video game.

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the connection between the “Dragon Ball” manga franchise and the “Dragon Quest” video game series. Both feature characters designed by Akira Toriyama, but they involve distinct characters and story lines.

How we handle corrections

John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon

'Feud' season 2 concludes with Truman Capote's tragic early demise. Here's everything you need to know about the author's death and his unfinished book.

• "Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans" concludes with a focus on Truman Capote's final years.
• The writer died at age 59 in 1984 with his much-hyped book, "Answered Prayers," unpublished.
• Some think he did finish it, and the missing chapters have fascinated people for decades.

Across eight episodes, the second season of Ryan Murphy's " Feud: Capote vs. The Swans ," has dramatized how acclaimed American author Truman Capote ( Tom Hollander ) changed New York society and the trajectory of his career with the publication of a scandalous short story that satirized those whom he affectionately dubbed " The Swans ."

The story, titled "La Côte Basque 1965" — named after a Manhattan restaurant where Capote and his jet-setting, glamorous female acquaintances once regularly dined — was a thinly veiled fictionalization of their lives that exposed their scandals and secrets.

It was published in an issue of Esquire in 1975, and as audiences have come to learn from the series, it had devastating consequences.

Ann Woodward , pseudonymized but identifiable in the story, died by suicide before the issue hit newsstands, with some believing that Capote's words had pushed her over the edge.

Beyond that, the fallout of the story's publication caused irrevocable rifts between Capote and those he cared for deeply.

According to Laurence Leamer's " Capote's Women " — which showrunner Jon Robin Baitz adapted the series from — the "In Cold Blood" author's excommunication from high society caused him to sink deeper into a dependence on alcohol and drugs in the following decade.

He died in 1984, a month shy of his 60th birthday.

Capote died far from his beloved world of New York society

As "Feud" shows, Joanne Carson (played by Molly Ringwald), the ex-wife of "The Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson, remained on good terms with Capote until his death.

That's despite the fact that "La Côte Basque 1965" featured a character seemingly based on her.

In the story, her suspected counterpart is Jane Baxter, the wife of a "midnight-TV clown" who received a phone call from her philandering husband while he was in bed with his mistress.

It's possible that Carson forgave Capote because, as she told The Los Angeles Times in 2006, "Truman stood by me like a rock" after her divorce in 1972.

Per the same outlet, Capote kept two rooms at Carson's home on Sunset Boulevard, where he spent his time writing and swimming.

It was also where he died on August 25, 1984.

According to PBS , Capote's official death certificate attributed his death to "liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication."

Related stories

Capote's dependency on drugs was well known. The "Breakfast at Tiffany's" author spent time at rehabilitation clinics in the late 1970s . In 1978, he also openly spoke about his substance abuse during an on-air interview with television personality Stanley Siegal.

Capote, who appeared intoxicated during the conversation, was asked by Siegel, "What's going to happen unless you lick this problem of drugs and alcohol?"

Capote responded : "The obvious answer is that eventually, I mean, I'll kill myself — without meaning to."

The unanswered questions around 'Answered Prayers'

According to reports, in his final weeks Capote was still trying to complete his much-hyped but never-published novel "Answered Prayers."

In his own words, the book was to be his "magnum opus." That's what he wrote in a letter to the Random House editor in the summer of 1958 when he first began planning it, according to Vanity Fair .

But Capote was waylaid by another project. A year later, he began work on "In Cold Blood," which ended up consuming six years of his life.

Eventually published in 1965, the widely praised " non-fiction novel " focused on the massacre of a Kansas family by two drifters, who were ultimately given the death sentence.

Following "In Cold Blood," Capote was due to deliver "Answered Prayers" for publication in 1968, but that deadline was not kept.

After focusing his efforts on his famous Black and White Ball , which he threw in 1966, he renegotiated his contract and promised the book would be complete by 1973. More deadlines were proposed in 1974, 1977, and finally in 1981.

While "Feud" suggests that Capote did, in fact, finish the manuscript and then, in a moment of career self-sabotage, set fire to the only copy, there is no concrete evidence that this happened.

Esquire published two more chapters of "Answered Prayers" in 1976, and together with "La Côte Basque 1965," they formed " Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel ," which was published posthumously in 1987.

According to Vanity Fair , Capote recorded the outline for the book, comprising seven chapters, in his journals.

A supposedly missing chapter was published in Vanity Fair in 2012 after being found among Capote's work stored in the New York Public Library.

As for the other three chapters, they might once have existed.

Carson reportedly heard Capote read these aloud, according to George Plimpton's biography of the writer .

Carson also contended that the day before Capote's death he handed her a key that appeared to be for a safe deposit box or locker and stated the complete manuscript "will be found when they want to be found."

According to Plimpton, a search for what the key unlocked was carried out after Capote's death, but nothing was found.

In his editor's note for "Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel," Random House editor Joseph M. Fox posited the theory that the complete manuscript did exist but was "deliberately destroyed" by Capote in the early 1980s.

The finale of "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.

• Main content