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Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan “Famous Writers”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net – 10th March 2015. Last updated 5 March 2018.

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

(1792-1822)

Who Was Percy Bysshe Shelley?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, a controversial English writer of great personal conviction, was born on August 4, 1792. He was born and raised in the English countryside in the village Broadbridge Heath, just outside of West Sussex. He learned to fish and hunt in the meadows surrounding his home, often surveying the rivers and fields with his cousin and good friend Thomas Medwin. His parents were Timothy Shelley, a squire and member of Parliament, and Elizabeth Pilfold. The oldest of their seven children, Shelley left home at age of 10 to study at Syon House Academy, about 50 miles north of Broadbridge Heath and 10 miles west of central London. After two years, he enrolled at Eton College. While there, he was severely bullied, both physical and mentally, by his classmates. Shelley retreated into his imagination. Within a year’s time, he had published two novels and two volumes of poetry, including St Irvyne and Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson .

In the fall of 1810, Shelly entered University College, Oxford. It seemed a better academic environment for him than Eton, but after a few months, a dean demanded that Shelley visit his office. Shelley and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg had co-authored a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism . Its premise shocked and appalled the faculty (“…The mind cannot believe in the existence of a God.”), and the university demanded that both boys either acknowledge or deny authorship. Shelley did neither and was expelled.

Shelley’s parents were so exasperated by their son’s actions that they demanded he forsake his beliefs, including vegetarianism, political radicalism and sexual freedom. In August 1811, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, a 16-year-old woman his parents had explicitly forbidden him to see. His love for her was centered on the hope that he could save her from committing suicide. They eloped, but Shelley was soon annoyed with her and became interested in a woman named Elizabeth Hitchener, a schoolteacher who inspired his first major poem, Queen Mab . The poem’s title character, a fairy originally invented by William Shakespeare and described in Romeo and Juliet , describes what a utopian society on earth would be like.

In addition to long-form poetry, Shelley also began writing political pamphlets, which he distributed by way of hot air balloons, glass bottles and paper boats. In 1812, he met his hero and future mentor, the radical political philosopher William Godwin, author of Political Justice .

Relationships with Harriet and Mary

Although Shelley’s relationship with Harriet remained troubled, the young couple had two children together. Their daughter, Elizabeth Ianthe, was born in June 1813, when Shelley was 21. Before their second child was born, Shelley abandoned his wife and immediately took up with another young woman. Well-educated and precocious, his new love interest was named Mary, the daughter of Shelley’s beloved mentor, Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women . To Shelley’s surprise, Godwin was not in favor of Shelley dating his daughter. In fact, Godwin so disapproved that he would not speak with Mary for the next three years. Shelley and Mary fled to Paris, taking Mary’s sister, Jane, with them. They departed London by ship and, mostly traveling by foot, toured France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, often reading aloud to each other from the works of Shakespeare and Rousseau.

When the three finally returned home, Mary was pregnant and so was Shelley’s wife. The news of Mary’s pregnancy brought Harriet to her wit’s end. She requested a divorce and sued Shelley for alimony and full custody of their children. Harriet’s second child with Shelley, Charles, was born in November 1814. Three months later, Mary gave birth to a girl. The infant died just a few weeks later. In 1816, Mary gave birth to their son, William.

A dedicated vegetarian, Shelley authored several works on the diet and spiritual practice, including A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813). In 1815, Shelley wrote Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude , a 720-line poem, now recognized as his first great work. That same year, Shelley’s grandfather passed away and left him an annual allowance of 1,000 British pounds.

Friendship with Lord Byron

In 1816, Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont, invited Shelley and Mary to join her on a trip to Switzerland. Clairmont had begun dating the Romantic poet Lord Byron and wished to show him off to her sister. By the time they commenced the trip, Byron was less interested in Clairmont. Nevertheless, the three stayed in Switzerland all summer. Shelley rented a house on Lake Geneva close to Byron’s and the two men became fast friends. Shelley wrote incessantly during his visit. After a long day of boating with Byron, Shelley returned home and wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty . After a trip through the French Alps with Byron, he was inspired to write Mont Blanc , a pondering on the relationship between man and nature.

Harriet’s Death and Shelley’s Second Marriage

In the fall of 1816, Shelley and Mary returned to England to find that Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, had committed suicide. In December of the same year, it was discovered that Harriet had also committed suicide. She was found drowned in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London. A few weeks later, Shelley and Mary finally married. Mary’s father was delighted by the news and accepted his daughter back into the family fold. Amidst their celebration, however, loss pursued Shelley. Following Harriet’s death, the courts ruled not to give Shelley custody of their children, asserting that they would be better off with foster parents.

With these matters settled, Shelley and Mary moved to Marlow, a small village in Buckinghamshire. There, Shelley befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt, both talented poets and writers. Shelley’s conversations with them encouraged his own literary pursuits. Around 1817, he wrote Laon and Cythna ; or, The Revolution of the Golden City . His publishers balked at the main storyline, which centers on incestuous lovers. He was asked to edit it and to find a new title for the work. In 1818, he reissued it as The Revolt of Islam . Though the title suggests the subject of Islam, the poem’s focus is religion in general and features socialist political themes.

Life in Italy

Shortly after the publication of The Revolt of Islam , Shelley, Mary and Clairmont left for Italy. Byron was living in Venice, and Clairmont was on a mission to bring their daughter, Allegra, to visit with him. For the next several years, Shelley and Mary moved from city to city. While in Venice, their baby daughter, Clara Everina, died. A year later, their son William also passed away. Around this time, Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound . During their residency in Livorno, in 1819, he wrote The Cenci and The Masque of Anarchy and Men of England , a response to the Peterloo Massacre in England.

Death and Legacy

On July 8, 1822, just shy of turning 30, Shelley drowned while sailing his schooner back from Livorno to Lerici, after having met with Hunt to discuss their newly printed journal, The Liberal . Despite conflicting evidence, most papers reported Shelley’s death as an accident. However, based on the scene that was discovered on the boat’s deck, others speculated that he might have been murdered by an enemy who detested his political beliefs.

Shelley’s body was cremated on the beach in Viareggio, where his body had washed ashore. Mary, as was the custom for women during the time, did not attend her husband’s funeral. Shelley’s ashes were interred in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. More than a century later, he was memorialized in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Shelley Bysshe
• Birth Year: 1792
• Birth date: August 4, 1792
• Birth City: Broadbridge Heath, England
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Known for his lyrical and long-form verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a prominent English Romantic poet and was one of the most highly regarded and influential poets of the 19th century.
• Education and Academia
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• Eton College
• Syon House Academy
• Death Year: 1822
• Death date: July 8, 1822
• Death City: Viareggio
• Death Country: Italy

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/percy-bysshe-shelley
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 26, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• If Winter Comes, can Spring be far behind?

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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 :

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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:.

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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

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• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Top 10 literary biographies

From Shakespeare to Shelley, Edith Wharton to VS Naipaul … literature’s greats have biographies to match

T he idea of writing about authors is, for me, irresistible, and I’ve just published my seventh. It was about Gore Vidal and I have often recalled Vidal’s wise suggestion (made 30 years ago) that I should write about major figures, as important lives make for Important Lives.

Needless to say, anyone involved in this business becomes a student of Great Lives, and I’ve spent decades reading and rereading my favourite examples in the genre. The beginning of literary biography for anyone is probably Boswell’s classic life of Samuel Johnson (1791), an entertaining portrait of the inimitable sage, or such Victorian treasures as Elizabeth Gaskell’s astute life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) or John Forster’s intimate biography of Charles Dickens (1874), his close friend. The 20th century saw many fine literary biographies emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also produced numerous heavy and boring tomes: on the American side Mark Schorer’s staggeringly detailed life of Sinclair Lewis from 1961 or Joseph Blotner’s anaesthetising life of William Faulkner from 1974; on the British, Norman Sherry’s tedious three-volume life of Graham Greene, finished in 1991.

It is such a huge field that I have narrowed my 10 favourites down to the era after the second world war.

1. Henry James by Leon Edel (Five volumes: 1953 to 1972) I’ve read these at least five times, slowly. Savouring each morsel. Although there are famously reductive (pseudo-Freudian) elements, the scholarship is impressive, the alertness to James’s shifting sensibility superb. It’s beautifully written, too. No later biographer of James can ignore this monument to the art of biography.

2. James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959) One of the best modern examples of literary biography, with its artfully chosen detail and narrative arc combining with a close reading of major texts.

3. Edith Wharton : A Biography by RWB Lewis (1975) Full of scholarship and astute readings, with a fine general sense of the times as well. It’s a good place to begin, but Hermione Lee’s brilliantly written biography in 2007 was a necessary compliment, challenging the somewhat stodgy view that Lewis put forward, revealing her complex sexuality and originality as a writer.

4. The Life of Langston Hughes by Arnold Rampersad (two volumes: 1986, 1988) Rampersad summons the rich world of the Harlem Renaissance and reveals the depth of African-American literary consciousness in this remarkable biography.

5. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes (1974) A startling, elegantly written, example of artistic biography. Holmes utterly revised our sense of this key Romantic poet, taking us into his political thoughts and activities, exploring his poetry in fresh ways.

6. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (1990) This is among my favorite books. I’ve read it again and again, as Ackroyd is himself a writer of Dickensian vitality – the biographer and subject are so well matched here.

7. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt (2004). A vast shelf of biographies of the Bard exists, but this is the book I would take with me to a desert island along with Shakespeare’s plays. It has energy and a great deal of unassertive yet far-reaching scholarship.

8. Tolstoy by A N Wilson (1989) Wilson writes so well, and he brings a blazing critical intelligence to bear as well as novelistic skills in assembling a great life of a great writer. I love this book.

9. The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot by Lyndall Gordon (1998) This brings together Eliot’s Early Years – a truly groundbreaking book – and Eliot’s New Life. We see Eliot in all of his alienated grandeur here, a deeply strange man, prejudiced, terrified of women, and yet massively gifted as a poet and critic. The very recent biography of young Eliot by Robert Crawford deepens our vision of Eliot and should be read beside Gordon’s work.

10. The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (2009) This biography of V S Naipaul, is wildly entertaining as well as informative. There is a kind of unwavering clarity and honest here. The complex genius if Naipaul is fully exposed. It’s a model of its kind.

• Jay Parini’s Every Time a Friend Succeeds Something Inside Me Dies: The Life of Gore Vidal is published by Little, Brown at £25 and is available from the Guardian bookshop at £20.
• Biography books
• Henry James
• James Joyce
• Edith Wharton
• Langston Hughes
• Charles Dickens

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Poems and Poets

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Finding Biographies

• Biography in Context This link opens in a new window Online biographical reference database in the fields of literature, science, business, entertainment, politics, sports, history, current events and the arts.Biographical information on over one million people throughout history, around the world.
• Biography Reference Bank This link opens in a new window Current Biography contains biographical information on approximately half a million people, from antiquity to the present. Dates of coverage: Ancient Times to present.
• Columbia Granger's World of Poetry This link opens in a new window Columbia Granger's World of Poetry contains citations for poems that appear in anthologies and collections, as well as poet biographies, commentaries, a glossary of poetic terms, and full text for some poems. Users can search poems by title, first line, author gender, genre, and more.
• Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window Literature Online includes full text of literary works in English from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It also includes the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, together with biographic and bibliographic reference materials for each author. More information less... A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose. LION is the single most extensive and wide-ranging online collection of English and American literature.Resources included in this resource are: Bibliographies Biographies Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Encyclopedia of African Literature Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 vols.) Encyclopedia of the Novel Handbook of African American Literature New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Oxford Companion to Irish Literature Penguin Classics Introductions Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2nd Edition)
• Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window Literature Resource Center offers biographical and other background information for research on literary topics, authors, and their works. Its coverage includes all genres and disciplines, all time periods, and all regions of the world. Literature Resource Center's content comes from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and more, including full text of selected poems, plays, and short stories.
• Twayne's Author Series This link opens in a new window Twayne’s Authors Series offers in-depth introductions to the lives and works of writers, the history and influence of literary movements, and the development of literary genres. The online version of Twayne's Authors Series includes content from six print series, including U.S. Authors, English Writers, and World Authors.

Using Subject Headings

Biographies are classified and sorted by author's name, dates of birth and death, and the term Biography. You can also limit you search in the NYU Libraries' catalog by using the genre facet on the left hand side of the results screen.

Here are some examples of subject headings:

• Neruda, Pablo, 1904-1973 -- Biography
• Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784
• Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967 -- Biography
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• Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979
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Digital Collections

• Allen Ginsberg Project The website of the Allen Ginsberg Estate which offers access to the vast collection of Ginsberg material. Explore published and never-before-published text, photos, hand-written documents and audio and video materials representing Allen's life-work.
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by multimedia artifacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources.
• The Poetess Archive This archive constitutes a resource for studying the literary history of popular British and American poetry. Much of it composed during what can be called the “bull market” of poetry's popularity, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular poetry was often written in what came to be designated an "effeminate" style, whether written by men or women. Writings in the poetess tradition were disseminated in myriad collections: miscellanies, beauties, literary annuals, gift books. They achieved a place of prominence in virtually every middle-class household. The Poetess Archive Database now contains a bibliography of over 4,000 entries for works by and about writers working in and against the “poetess tradition,” the extraordinarily popular, but much criticized, flowery poetry written in Britain and America between 1750 and 1900.
• Romantic Circles (University of Maryland) Romantic Circles is a refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture.
• Walt Whitman Archive (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) The Walt Whitman Archive is an electronic research and teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman's vast work, for the first time, easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. Includes digitized versions of all six editions of Leaves of Grass, plus a growing collection of Whitman's manuscripts.
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Chris Abani

Chris Abani is a professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize and a Guggenheim Award.

More at Copper Canyon

Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio is the author of six collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: The Philosopher’s Club (1994); J immy & Rita (1997); and Tell Me (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1999, she collaborated with Dorianne Laux on The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton), and in 2009 published another poetry guide Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (W.W. Norton). Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essay. Addonizio offers private poetry workshops in Oakland, CA, and in New York City. For more information about Kim Addonizio, visit www.kimaddonizio.com .

Dan Albergotti

Dan Albergotti is the author of two collections of poetry: Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), selected by Rodney James as the winner of the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition; and The Boatloads (BOA, 2008), which was selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. Albergotti has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is professor and Chair of the English Department at Coastal Carolina University.

James Arthur

James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker , The New Republic , Poetry , Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2010 , and Best Canadian Poetry 2008 . He was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1974 and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He received a B.A. from Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1997, an MA from the University of New Brunswick in 2001, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. He is married to the fiction writer Shannon Robinson.

Derrick Austin

Derrick Austin is the author of Trouble the Water, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize (BOA 2016). A Cave Canem fellow, Pushcart Prize, and four-time Best New Poets nominee, he earned his MFA at the University of Michigan. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2015 , New England Review , Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion , Callaloo , Crab Orchard Review , and other journals and anthologies. He is the Social Media Coordinator for The Offing . For more information on Derrick Austin, please visit http://themadscene.tumblr.com/poems .

Ellen Bass is the author of three books of poetry. Her collection Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) won the Lambada Literary Award. Among her other awards are a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod /Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, the Missouri Review’s Larry Levis Award, a fellowship from the California Arts Council, and two Pushcart Prizes. Bass currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. For more information about Ellen Bass, visit ellenbass.com .

Bruce Beasley

Bruce Beasley is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Theophobia (BOA, 2012). Beasley is the recipient of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Award for The Corpse Flower: New & Selected Poems (University of Washington Press, 2007), and the Colorado Prize for Poetry for Summer Mystagogia (University Press of Colorado, 1996). He has also been awarded three Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust. He is a professor of English at Western Washington University. For more information about Bruce Beasley, visit brucebeasley.net .

Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of three books of poetry: Placebo Effects (W.W. Norton, 1997), selected by William Matthews as a winner in the National Poetry Series; Curious Contact (BOA, 2004); and Burning of the Three Fires (BOA, 2010). For seven years she was publisher and co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary . She has also worked as a proofreader, medical editor, and advertising copywriter. Beaumont currently teaches at The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92 nd Street Y in Manhattan and in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. For more information about Jeanne Marie Beaumont, visit www.jeannemariebeaumont.com .

Devin Becker

Devin Becker is the digital initiatives and web services librarian at the University of Idaho Library, where he directs and maintains the library’s digital collections. In 2014 Becker was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker, and his first collection of poetry Shame | Shame (BOA, 2015), was selected by David St. John as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He is currently working on a Seed-Grant-funded project titled “CTRL-SHIFT”, which aims to document how established writers’ dealt with the transition from paper-based to digital writing practices due to the rise of personal computers. For more information about Devin Becker, visit devinbecker.org .

Erin Belieu

Erin Belieu was born and raised in Nebraska and educated at the University of Nebraska, Ohio State University , and Boston University . She is the author of Infanta , winner of the National Poetry Series in 1994, One Above & One Below , winner of the Midlands Poetry Prize and Ohioana Poetry Award, and Black Box , a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, all of which were published by Copper Canyon. Her poems have appeared in places such as Best American Poetry , The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, AGNI, Tin House, Yale Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review . Belieu co-founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts with poet Cate Marvin. She currently directs the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and is the Artistic Director at Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.

Mark Bibbins

Mark Bibbins is the author of Sky Lounge , which received a Lambda Literary Award, and They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full . He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and The New School, where he co-founded LIT magazine. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, The Best American Poetry , and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century . He was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow.

Sherwin Bitsui

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Tódích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan). He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and a BA from University of Arizona in Tucson. His recent honors include a 2011 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award and a Whiting Writers Award. Bitsui has published his poems in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT , and elsewhere.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

A native of Belgium, Laure-Anne Bosselaar has lived and worked throughout Europe and the United States. She is the author of three collections of poetry in English: The Hour Between Dog & Wolf (BOA, 1997); Small Gods of Grief (BOA, 2001); and A New Hunger (Copper Canyon Press, 2007). Bosselaar was awarded a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and was a Writer in Residence at The Vermont Studio Center and at Hamilton College. She is currently translating American poetry into French and Flemish poetry into English, and teaches at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For more information about Laure-Anne Bosselaar, visit laureannebosselaar.com .

Deborah Brown

Fleda brown.

Fleda Brown is the author of eight collections of poetry including No Need of Sympathy published by BOA in 2013. She is also the author of a memoir, Driving With Dvorak (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), and with Sydney Lea, a book of essays, Growing Old in Poetry (Autumn House Press, 2013). She joined the faculty of the University of Delaware English Department in 1978, where she founded the Poets in the Schools Program, which she directed for more than twelve years. Brown served as poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-2007, and she currently teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. For more information about Fleda Brown, visit fledabrown.com .

Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter  for the Mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is an Assistant Professor at Emory University. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. He lives in Atlanta.

Nickole Brown

Nickole Brown’s books include: Fanny Says (BOA, 2015), a biography-in-poems about her late grandmother; Sister (Red Hen Press, 2007), a novel-in-stories; and an anthology, Air Fare (Sarabande, 2004), co-edited with Judith Taylor. For ten years, Brown was director of marketing and development at Sarabande Books, and was also the editorial assistant to the late Hunter S. Thompson. Currently she is the editor for the Marie Alexander Series in Prose Poetry at White Pine Press, and is on faculty every summer at the Sewanee Young Writer’s Conference and at the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Murray State. For more information about Nickole Brown, visit nickolebrown.org .

Rick Bursky

Rick Bursky is the author of three collections of poetry: I’m No Longer Troubled By the Extravagance (BOA, 2015); Death Obscura (Sarabande, 2010); The Soup of Something Missing (Bear Star Press, 2004), winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize; and the chapbook, The Invention of Fiction (Hollyridge Press, 2005). He received his BFA from Art Center College of Design, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Bursky lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising and teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. For more information about Rick Bursky visit, www.rickbursky.com

Lucille Clifton

Wyn Cooper is the author of four collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions, Postcards from the Interior (2005), and Chaos is the New Calm (2010). Cooper is also a storyteller, songwriter, and essayist. In 1993, the poem “Fun” from his first book, The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987) was turned into the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. Cooper currently works as an editor for both aspiring and established authors and helps run the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont. For more information about Wyn Cooper, visit www.wyncooper.com .

Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels’ recent books include Birth Marks (BOA, 2013,) winner of the Milt Kessler Poetry Award from Binghamton University; the Midwest Award-winning short fiction collection, Trigger Man: More Tales from the Motor City (Michigan State University Press, 2011); and Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011), which won the Poetry Gold Medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. In 2010 he wrote and produced the independent film “Mr. Pleasant”, his third produced screenplay. Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

Geffrey Davis

Geffrey Davis’ debut collection of poems, Revising the Storm (BOA, 2014) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Other honors include the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, the Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Penn State’s Institute for the Arts & Humanities. Davis teaches in the Program for Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas, and serves on the board of directors for the journal Toe Good Poetry . For more information about Geffrey Davis, visit www.geffreydavis.com .

Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 and moved with his family to Jamaica at the age of ten. His first book of poetry Progeny of Air ( Peepal Tree , 1994) won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection in the UK. The author of fifteen subsequent collections, Dawes has also published two novels, four anthologies, numerous essays, and seen over fifteen of his plays produced. Dawes actively maintains his Jamaican roots. In 2009 he was awarded an Emmy for his Pulitzer Center funded interactive website, LiveHopeLove.com entitled “Hope: Living and Loving with AIDS in Jamaica”. At the University of South Carolina he was the Distinguished Poet in Residence, Founder and executive Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, and director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute. Since 2011 he has taught at the University of Nebraska as a Chancellor’s Professor of English as well as the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem faculty member and teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University.

Marsha de la O

Marsha de la O’s first book of poetry, Black Hope (New Issues Press, 1997), won the New Issues Press Poetry Prize. Her latest collection, Antidote for Night (BOA, 2015), was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Prize. Her work also appears in four anthologies, the latest of which, One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form , is forthcoming from Lynx House Press in 2017. The recipient of the 2014 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, the dA Poetry Prize, and the Ventura Poetry Prize, de la O is the publisher of the poetry journal, Askew .

Debra Kang Dean

Debra Kang Dean is the author of three collections of poetry, including one from BOA Editions, Precipitates (2003). Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner, 1999), The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (Middlebury, 2000) and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City (Milkweed Editions, 2000). She is on the faculty of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA Program, and is a contributing editor for Tar River Poetry . For more information about Debra Kang Dean, visit debrakangdean.com .

Natalie Diaz

Natalie Diaz, a member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes, attended Old Dominion University on a full athletic scholarship. After playing professional basketball in Austria, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey she returned to ODU for an MFA in writing. Her publications include  Prairie Schooner ,  Iowa Review ,  Crab Orchard Review , among others. Her work was selected by Natasha Trethewey for  Best New Poets  and she has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She lives in Surprise, Arizona.

Michael Dickman

Winner of the 2010 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for his second collection Flies (Copper Canyon, 2011), Michael Dickman was born and raised in the Lents district of Portland, Oregon. His poems are regularly published in The New Yorker , and his work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House , and Narrative magazine. His first book, The End of the West , was published by Copper Canyon in 2009, and after publication he and his twin brother Matthew, also a poet, were profiled in The New Yorker and Poets & Writers. Dickman is currently serving as a Lecturer at Princeton University.

Sean Thomas Dougherty

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author of twelve books of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Broken Hallelujahs (2007), Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (2010); and All You Ask For Is Longing: New & Selected Poems (2014). His awards include a Fulbright Lectureship in the Balkans and two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry. Dougherty received his MFA from Syracuse University and reads and conducts workshops around the country.

Russell Edson

Russell Edson was a poet, novelist, writer and illustrator. Called the “godfather of the prose poem” Edson began publishing poetry in the 1960’s and is the author of thirteen collections, including The Rooster’s Wife (BOA, 2005). Edson received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lived for many years in Stamford CT, and died in 2014.

Kerry James Evans

Kerry James Evans served six years in the Army National Guard as a Combat Engineer, including one-year active duty at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, during Operation Noble Eagle. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and will receive his PhD in English-Creative Writing from Florida State University. His poems have been published in Agni, Beloit Poetry Journal, Narrative, New England Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and many others. His first book Bangalore , was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, a Runner-up for Boa’s A. Poulin Jr. Prize, and a finalist for numerous other prizes. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Kingsbury Fellowship at Florida State University. He lives with his wife in Tallahassee, Florida.

Richard Foerster

Richard Foerster is the author of six collections of poetry, three from BOA Editions: Trillium (1998); Double Going (2002), named a notable book by the National Book Critics Circle; and The Burning of Troy (2006), winner of the Poetry Category for the 2007 Maine Literary Awards. His other numerous awards include the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine, and residency fellowships from Yaddo and the National Endowment for the Arts. Foerster is also typesets all of BOA’s beautiful books.

John Gallaher

John Gallaher’s most recent poetry collection, In A Landscape was published by BOA Editions in 2014. He is also the author, together with G.C. Waldrep, of Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA, 2011), which was written in collaboration almost completely through email. His poetry collection, The Little Book of Guesses (Four Way Books, 2007), was the recipient of the Levis Poetry Prize. Gallaher is currently the co-editor of The Laurel Review and The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, and is an assistant professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University.

Richard Garcia

Richard Garcia is the author of six collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Rancho Notorious (2001), The Persistence of Objects (2006), and The Chair (2014). Garcia is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For twelve years he was poet-in-residence at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where he conducted workshops in art and poetry for hospitalized children. He teaches creative writing in the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA Program and at the College of Charleston. For more information about Richard Garcia, visit www.richardgarcia.info .

Isabella Gardner

During her lifetime (1915-1981), Isabella Gardner published four distinguished books of poetry. The great-niece of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a cousin of Robert Lowell, Gardner was a professional actress for several years before moving to Chicago, where she served as an associate editor of Poetry magazine from 1952-1956. In 2000, BOA published Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems as part of its American Poets Continuum Series, and established the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. The award is presented biennially to a mid-career poet with a new book of exceptional merit.

Aracelis Girmay

Winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Aracelis Girmay is an assistant professor of poetry at Hampshire College. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007), and Kingdom Animalia , winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Award from BOA Editions. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member. Her next book of poetry, the black maria is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016.

Ray Gonzalez

Ray Gonzalez is the author of fifteen books of poetry, including six from BOA Editions: The Heat of Arrivals (1997), winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award; Cabato Sentora (2000), a Minnesota Book Award Finalist; The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (2003), winner of the 2003 Minnesota Book Award; Consideration of the Guitar: New & Selected Poems (2005); Cool Auditor: Prose Poems (2009); and Beautiful Wall (2015). Gonzalez is also the author of three collections of essays, two collections of short stories, and the editor of twelve anthologies. He has served as the poetry editor for the Bloomsbury Review for thirty-five years and in 1998, founded the poetry journal LUNA . Gonzales is a professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.

Janice N. Harrington

Janice N. Harrington writes poetry and children’s books. Her first book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone (2007), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her second book of poetry, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home was published by BOA in 2011, and her latest collection, Primitive is forthcoming from BOA in 2016. Harrington has worked as a public librarian and as a professional storyteller. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois. For more information about Janice N. Harrington, visit www.janiceharrington.com .

Laura Kasischke

Laura Kasischke is the author of eight collections of poetry and seven novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Poetry Prize, and the Rilke Poetry Prize. Her most recent book of poems, Space in Chains, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her son and teaches at the University of Michigan MFA program in Ann Arbor.

Meg Kearney

Meg Kearney is the author of two collections of poetry: Home By Now (Four Way Books, 2009), was the winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award, and a finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize; and An Unkindness of Ravens (BOA, 2001). She is also the author of three novels in verse for teens and a picture book for children, Trouper (the three-legged dog) , (Scholastic, 2013). Kearney is founding director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College, and was associate director of the National Book Foundation for eleven years. She is a former poetry editor of Echoes , a quarterly literary journal, and a past president of the Hudson Valley Writers Association of upstate New York. For more information about Meg Kearney, visit www.megkearney.com .

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Brigit Pegeen Kelley is the author of three collections of poetry: To the Place of Trumpets (Yale University Press, 1988), selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; Song (BOA, 1995), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and The Orchard (BOA, 2004), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Her many other accolades include a “Discovery”/ the Nation award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council.

Christopher Kennedy

Christopher Kennedy is the author of four collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions: Ennui Prophet (2011); and Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (2007) which received the Isabella Gardner Award from BOA. He is also co-translator of Light & Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil (2013), published by BOA as part of The Lannan Translation Selections Series. He has received fellowships and grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Kennedy is associate professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Kizer won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for her poetry collection Yin (BOA, 1984). After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College she was a Fellow of the Chinese Government in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In 1959 she co-founded the prestigious journal Poetry Northwest , which she edited from its inception until 1965. in 1964 – 65 she was a Specialist in Literature for the United States Department of State in Pakistan; and from 1966-1970 she served as the first Director of the Literature Program for the newly created National Endowment for the Arts. In 1995 Kizer was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets but resigned three years later to protest the absence of women and minorities on the governing board. Her numerous honors include the Frost Medal, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Kizer died in 2014.

Jennifer Kronovet

Jennifer Kronovet’s debut poetry collection, Awayward (BOA, 2007), was selected by Jean Valentine as the winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. Kronovet received an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Columbia University Teachers College. She has lived in Beijing, Chicago, and New York where she was born and raised. She is a founding editor of CIRCUMFERENCE , the journal of poetry in translation, and currently is writer-in-residence at Washington University in St. Louis. For more information about Jennifer Kronovet, visit jenniferkronovet.com .

Keetje Kuipers

Keetje Kuipers has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, a Bread Loaf Fellow, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. In 2007 she completed her tenure as the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, using her time there to complete work on her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth (BOA, 2010), which was awarded the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Her second book, The Keys to the Jail , was published by BOA in 2014. Kuipers is an assistant professor at Auburn University where she is Editor of S outhern Humanities Review . For more information about Keetje Kuipers, visit www.keetjekuipers.com .

Adrie Kusserow

Adrie Kusserow is a cultural anthropologist who works with Sudanese refugees in trying to build schools in war-worn South Sudan. Currently an associate professor of Cultural Anthropology at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Kusserow earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University. She is the author of two collections of poetry, both published by BOA Editions, Hunting Down the Monk (2002), and Refuge (2013).

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux is the author of five collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Awake (1990), selected by Philip Levine as a Winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize; What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Smoke (2000). Her most recent collection, The Book of Men (W.W. Norton, 2012) was the winner of the Patterson Prize. Among her awards are two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. For more information about Dorianne Laux, visit doriannelaux.net .

Katy Lederer

Katy Lederer is the author of two poetry collections: Winter Sex (Wave Books, 2004); and The Heaven-Sent Leaf (BOA, 2009); as well as the memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Broadway Books, 2004), which was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”, and one of Esquire’s eight “Best Books of the Year.” Her honors include fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. For several years she worked at a quantitative hedge fund in midtown Manhattan. She also worked as a teacher, anthropological researcher, and semi-professional poker player. For more information about Katy Lederer, visit www.katylederer.com .

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is the author of four collections of poetry, three from BOA Editions: Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986) which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A second edition of The Winged Seed: A Remembrance was published by BOA in 2013 which included a new forward by the author.

Sarah Lindsay

Sarah Lindsay was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; she graduated from St. Olaf College with a BA and a Paracollege major in English and Creative Writing, and also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She has published two chapbooks, Bodies of Water and Insomniac’s Lullaby , and two books in the Grove Press Poetry Series: Primate Behavior , a finalist for the National Book Award, and Mount Clutter. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Parnassus, The Yale Review , and other magazines. She is also a recipient of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize. She has recently been nominated for the 2010 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

Hugh Martin

Hugh Martin spent six years in the Army National Guard and eleven months in Iraq. His chapbook, So How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was published by the Wick Poetry Center, and his first full-length collection of poetry, The Stick Soldiers (BOA, 2013), was awarded the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Martin is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award from the Iowa Review . A graduate of Muskingum University and Arizona State, he is currently the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. For more information about Hugh Martin, visit www.hugh-martin.com , or hughmartin.blogspot.com .

Erika Meitner

Valzhyna mort.

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. Her first book of poetry, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes , was published in Belarus (2005). Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) is her second book and was co-translated by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. It is the first Belarusian-English poetry book ever published in the United States and has been translated into German, Swedish, and Russian. Her English translations of Eastern-European poets are included in New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008). Her most recently published book is Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). Mort currently teaches at the University of Baltimore and has the distinction of being the youngest person to ever be on the cover of Poets & Writers .

Kathryn Nuernberger

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of two collections of poetry, Rag & Bone (Elxir Press, 2011), and The End of Pink , forthcoming from BOA in 2016. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of Central Missouri where she also serves as Poetry Editor for Pleiades .

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes including four collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), and Transfer (2011). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize and the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry. In January 2010, Nye was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. For more information about Naomi Shihab Nye, visit barclayagency.com/nye .

Lisa Olstein

Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, Lost Alphabet , and Little Stranger . An album of songs based on her writing , Cold Satellite , was released by singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault in 2010. Olstein is the recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. A contributing editor of jubilat , she co-founded and for ten years co-directed the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She teaches in the New Writers Project, the MFA program based in the Department of English at UT Austin.

Alan Michael Parker

Alan Michael Parker is the author of eight collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: The Vandals (1999), Love Song with Motor Vehicles (2003) and Elephants & Butterflies (2008). The Douglas C. Houchens Professor of English at Davidson College, Parker also teaches at the University of Tampa Low-Residency MFA Program. For more information about Alan Michael Parker, visit Alanmichaelparker.com .

A. Poulin Jr.

The founder of BOA, Editions, Ltd., A. Poulin, Jr. was the author of six collections of poetry. Poulin was also a major translator of the French and German poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, and the co-editor, with Michael Waters, of Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton-Mifflin). Mentor to numerous contemporary poets and scholars, Poulin died in 1996.

Roger Reeves

Roger Reeves’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and Tin House , among others. He has a BA in English from Morehouse College, an MA in English from Texas A&M University, and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Reeves earned a PhD from the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. King Me is his debut collection.

Ira Sadoff is the author of eight collections of poetry, a novel, and a book of criticism. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1973 he was a fellow at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and in 1974 he was the Alan Collins Fellow in Poetry and Prose at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Co-founder of the Seneca Review , Sadoff currently teaches in the MFA program at Drew University and serves as the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of English at Colby College in Maine.

Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper’s, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review . She is an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.

Matthew Shenoda

Matthew Shenoda is the author of two collections of poetry: Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press, 2005), named one of 2005’s debut books of the year by Poets & Writers magazine, and winner of a 2006 American Book Award; and Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA, 2009). His most recent work, An Anthology of Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden , edited with Kwame Dawes is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in 2016. He is an associate professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College, Chicago. For more information about Matthew Shenoda, visit www.matthewshenoda.com .

Louis Simpson

The author of seventeen books of poetry, Louis Simpson was the recipient of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection At the End of the Open Road (Wesleyan University Press, 1964). Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology (Story Line Press). His book The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001 (BOA, 2003), was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Simpson died in 2012.

W.D. Snodgrass

The author of nineteen collections of poetry, W.D. Snodgrass’ first collection of poems, Hearts Needle received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960. Often credited with being one of the founding members of the “confessional” school of poetry, he dismissed the term and never regarded his work as such. Snodgrass published four collections of poetry with BOA Editions: The Fuehrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977), revised edition titled The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle: Poems (1995); Each in His Season (1993): Selected Translations (1998): and After-Images: Autobiographical Sketches (1999). Snodgrass died in 2009.

Barton Sutter

The only author to win the Minnesota Book Award in three different categories: poetry for The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 1993); fiction for My Father’s War and Other Stories (Viking Adult, 1991); and creative non-fiction for Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map (University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Sutter has written for public radio and regularly performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers. In 2011 Barton Sutter retired from teaching at the University of Wisconsin, Superior and currently lives in Duluth with his wife Dorothea Diver, on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior. For more information about Barton Sutter, visit bartonsutter.com .

Craig Morgan Teicher

Craig Morgan Teicher is a poet, critic, and freelance writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Brenda Is In The Room And Other Poems (Center for Literary Publishing, 2007); and To Keep Love Blurry (BOA, 2012). His collection of short stories and fables, Cradle Book , was published by BOA in 2010. His next collection of poetry, The Trembling Answers is forthcoming from BOA in 2017. For more information about Craig Morgan Teicher, visit craigmorganteicher.com .

Michael Teig

Michael Teig’s first collection of poetry Big Back Yard (BOA, 2004), was awarded the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat With a Stick was published by BOA in 2013. Teig is the co-founder of the literary magazine jubilat , and works as a freelance writer and editor in Northampton, MA.

Ryan Teitman

Ryan Teitman’s first collection of poetry, Litany for the City (BOA, 2012) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and also worked as a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia before receiving an MFA and MA from Indiana University. Teitman currently teaches at Gettysburg College.

Karen Volkman

Karen Volkman is the author of Nomina (BOA, 2008); Crash’s Law (Norton, 1996), a National Series Selection; and Spar (University of Iowa Press, 2002), which received the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her next collection of poetry, Whereso , is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Bogliasco Foundation, Volkman currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Montana.

G.C. Waldrep

G.C. Waldrep’s many books of poetry include: Testament (BOA, 2015);  Your Father on the Train of Ghosts  (BOA, 2011), a collaboration with John Gallaher; and  Disclamor  (BOA, 2007). Waldrep has received prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets, as well as the Colorado Prize, the Dorset Prize, the Campbell Corner Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Writing, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Waldrep teaches at Bucknell University, is Editor for the literary journal  West Branch , and serves as Editor-at-Large for  The Kenyon Review .

Michael Waters

Michael Waters is the author of ten collections of poetry, including five from BOA Editions: Gospel Night (2011); Darling Vulgarity (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001); Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (1997); and Not Just Any Death (1979). He is co-editor of Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), and editor of The Selected Poems of A. Poulin, Jr. (BOA, 2001). His honors include fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, four Pushcart Prizes and three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. Waters is a professor of English at Monmouth University. His newest collection of poetry, Celestial Joyride is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016.

Jillian Weise

Jillian Weise is the author of two books of poetry: The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007); and The Book of Goodbyes (BOA, 2013), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Isabella Gardner Award. She is also the author of the novel, The Colony (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, 2010). Weise traveled to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina on a Fulbright Fellowship, and spent two years as a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provencetown. She teaches at Clemson University and co-directs the Annual Clemson Literary Festival. For more information about Jillian Weise, visit www.jillianweise.freeservers.com .

Cecilia Woloch

Cecilia Woloch is the author of six collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions: Late (2004), for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year; and Carpathia (2009), a finalist for the Milton Kessler Poetry Award. A celebrated teacher, Woloch has conducted poetry workshops for thousands of children, young people, professional writers, and educators throughout the United States and around the world. She is also the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of the Paris Poetry Workshop. For more information about Cecilia Woloch, visit ceciliawoloch.squarespace.com .

C.D. Wright

C.D. Wright has published more than fifteen collections of poetry and prose. One With Others was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award and the Leonore Marshal Prize. Reviewing Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon, 2008), The New York Times noted: “C.D. Wright belongs to a school of exactly one.” Her collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster, One Big Self , focused on Louisiana prisoners, was honored with a Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies. She also received awards from the Lannan Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2004 she was named a MacArthur Fellow; in 2005, she was the recipient of the Robert Creeley Award. Wright is from the Arkansas Ozarks. In the mid-nineties, with a fellowship from the Wallace Foundation, she curated “a walk-in book of Arkansas,” a touring exhibition. She developed two state literary maps, one of Arkansas, her native state and one of Rhode Island. Wright is on the faculty at Brown University, and lives outside of Providence, Rhode Island.

Dean Young has published fourteen books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas, Austin.

Matthew Zapruder

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, American Linden, The Pajamaist , Come On All You Ghosts, and Sun Bear . The Pajamaist was selected as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. Come On All You Ghosts was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and was also selected as the 2010 Booklist Editors’ Choice for poetry, as well as the Northern California Independent Booksellers poetry book of the year. Zapruder has been a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas, and a recipient of a May Sarton Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, Zapruder lives in San Francisco, where he is an editor at Wave Books.

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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.

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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!

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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 . 

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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.

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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.

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