Author Bios

Most books have is a short author “bio” (short for biography) in which the author talks about themselves a bit in the third person. You might find it on the dust jacket, the back cover, or the back page.

A great way to practice describing an interesting character is to write your own author bio! To write an author bio, you have to really think about what makes you “you.” You also need to consider what about you would make someone want to read about you. That's exactly what you'll need to do for the characters in your novel.

Start by completing a Character Questionnaire for yourself, then move on to writing an original well-developed character introduction for yourself! You're encouraged to share it in our online classroom’s introductions topic!

Feeling stuck? Check out this small sampling of author bios (PDF) to see all the ways an author’s bio can be silly or serious, brief or detailed. You might also flip to the author's bio in a few of your favorite novels to see how your favorite authors described themselves.

ERIC CARLE invented writing, the airplane, and the internet. He was also the first person to reach the North Pole. He has flown to Mars and back in one day, and was enthusiastically greeted by the Martians. “Very strange beings,” he reported on his return. He has written one thousand highly regarded books; a team of experts is presently attempting to grasp their meaning. “It might take a century,” said the chief expert. Carle is also a great teller of stories — but not all of them are true, for instance those in this book.

EOIN COLFER (pronounced Owen) was born in Wexford on the South-East coast of Ireland in 1965, where he and his four brothers were brought up by his father (an elementary school teacher, historian and artist of note) and mother (a drama teacher). He first developed an interest in writing in primary (elementary) school with gripping Viking stories inspired by history he was learning in school at the time!

After leaving school he got his degree from Dublin university and qualified as a primary school teacher, returning to work in Wexford. He married in 1991 and he and his wife spent about 4 years between 1992 and 1996 working in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Italy. His first book, Benny and Omar, was published in 1998, based on his experiences in Tunisia; it has since been translated into many languages. A sequel followed in 1999, followed by some other books. Then in 2001 the first Artemis Fowl book was published and he was able to resign from teaching and concentrate fully on writing.

He says, “I will keep writing until people stop reading or I run out of ideas. Hopefully neither of these will happen anytime soon. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

ERIN HUNTER is inspired by a love of cats and a fascination with the ferocity of the natural world. As well as having great respect for nature in all its forms, Erin enjoys creating rich mythical explanations for animal behavior, shaped by her interest in astrology and standing stones.

(Erin Hunter is a collective pseudonym for several people: Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Gillian Philip, Inbali Iserles, Tui T. Sutherland and Rosie Best.)

MINDY KALING lives in rural New Hampshire and does not own a TV.

BRANDON MULL is the author of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling Beyonders and Fablehaven series. Brandon resides in a happy little valley near the mouth of a canyon with his wife and four children. He spent two years living in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile where he learned Spanish and juggling. He once won a pudding eating contest in the park behind his grandma’s house, earning a gold medal.

PHILIP REEVE was born in Brighton in 1966. He has one younger sister. He wrote his first story at the tender age of five; it was about a spaceman called Spike and his dog Spook. He went to St Luke’s School in Queens Park, Brighton where he enjoyed writing, drawing, history and acting, and didn’t enjoy math or P.E.

Later he went to Stanley Deason Secondary School in Whitehawk. There he continued to enjoy writing, drawing, history, and acting, and liked science but still wasn’t keen on math or P.E. During his stay he became interested in illustration, Arthurian legend, and making ultra-low-budget films on Super 8mm film. As a teenager he went on to study at Varndean Sixth Form College where he persisted in his enjoyment of writing, drawing, history, and acting, but still didn’t like math. No P.E. was involved.

Then it was art college; a Foundation Course at Brighton followed by a two year diploma at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology which has since changed its name to something else, possibly in an effort to shake off the shame of ever having sheltered him. Three years as an art student having rendered him basically unemployable, he returned to Brighton, there to work in a small independent bookshop while pursuing various non-paying sidelines as writer/producer/director of low budget film and comedy projects in his spare time. Towards the end of this time he co-wrote a musical, The Ministry of Biscuits, with writer and composer Brian Mitchell, but was eventually forced by lack of funds to track down some cartooning work and finally entered the wonderful world of the freelance illustrator in the early 1990s. There he was to remain for several years, providing the pictures for several Horrible Histories, lots of Murderous Maths and other hilarious and improving books.

Since his spare time was no longer big enough to accommodate film and comedy projects he turned to writing novels, the first of which, Mortal Engines, was published in 2001. It won the Smarties Gold Award1, the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award and the Blue Peter ‘Book I Couldn’t Put Down’ Award. Four sequels to Mortal Engines followed, the last of which, A Darkling Plain, won both the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. There has also been a trilogy of steam-powered Victorian space adventures, Larklight, Starcross and Mothstorm, and a novel set in Dark Age Britain called Here Lies Arthur which won the Carnegie Medal 2008. His latest novel, Fever Crumb, returns to the world of Mortal Engines; the next, No Such Thing As Dragons, will be an every day story of fake medieval dragon hunters.

Philip and his wife Sarah moved from Brighton to Devon in 1998, and now live on Dartmoor, where their son Sam was born in 2002.

J.K. ROWLING was a struggling single mother when she wrote the beginnings of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on scraps of paper at a local café. But her efforts soon paid off, as she received an unprecedented award from the Scottish Arts Council enabling her to finish the book. Since then, the debut novel has become an international phenomenon, garnering rave reviews and major awards, including the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, and the Smarties prize.1

Ms. Rowling lives in Edinburgh with her daughter.

LEMONY SNICKET was born in a small town where the inhabitants were suspicious and prone to riot. He now lives in the city. During his spare time he gathers evidence and is considered something of an expert by leading authorities.

(Lemony Snicket is the pen name of Daniel Handler.)