Writing Your Author Bio

Tell us who you are

Whether you want to be a novelist, a journalist, a blogger, or an artist or speaker of any type, you will at some point be asked to submit a short or long bio of yourself.

My Medium bio is honestly uninspiring, and I’ve been thinking of changing it and depending on when you’re reading this, I may have already changed it (thus this post). This is it: Women’s Fiction author of That Was Then, Say You’ll Be Mine, and Evenings at the Argentine Club. Speaker and teacher. https://www.facebook.com/juliaamante/

This is okay for my author website or maybe social media pages, but not for what I’m doing on Medium. And this is what I want to address today. There are no right or wrong bios, just appropriate and inappropriate for what you need to accomplish.

You should craft a different biography for each of your sites and for each situation. If I’m asked to speak at an event, let’s say at a businesswomen’s organization, I would not want the Medium short bio, even if they asked for a short bio. I would want to say something about my business background as a publisher and professor of business writing. However, if I were to speak at a writer’s conference, then yes, I’d want to mention my accomplishments as a writer.

The audience wants to know why they should listen to you or read your work. They are interested in what you can offer them, and your bio helps to give them a clue or small piece of the puzzle.