How to Write an Author Bio

This article is a must-read for artists and writers who want to impress people in shows, and on the back cover of their books. As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios. This can be a problem, since artists, unlike writers (or perhaps exactly like writers), aren’t used to selling themselves, and aren’t used to writing about themselves. They tend to treat the bio like an interview, or a conversation, and while it may work some of the time, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

Write in the third person (most of the time)
Writing in the third person distances yourself from your author bio, which actually makes it easier to write. Use whatever author name you have decided upon to begin. Writing ‘ J.A.Smith lives in California with her husband and two dogs. ‘A storm In The House’ is her third novel…’ sounds much more professional then saying ‘I live in California with my husband and two dogs etc…’

That being said, the About page on a blog is less constrained by this, and since a blog has a more conversational tone (especially a personal blog, like mine), you can be more conversational, and less cold and detached. A newspaper blog, on the other hand, should always be using 3rd person for the About the Blogger blurb.
(via www.writerslife.org)