Turbocharging the bio section of your query letters: Our top tips (Part One)
Plus, advice for the bio sections of artist statements and an introduction to the secret weapon known as "The Aspirational Pivot."
Last week we did a “Friday Office Hours” open call for biographical statements and hundreds of you responded. I didn’t think I’d be able to get a newsletter out this week but I ended up so inspired by your bios, and have so much advice to share on the topic of biographical statements that I decided to break this bio-related newsletter into two parts.
About Part One: Today’s tips are culled from my own experience querying agents and using bios in grant, prize and residency applications and also from the questions some of you sent in. We’ll also be using real life examples from some of our subscribers who bravely gave me permission to use their material here for workshop. For some of these examples, I got on the phone with select subscribers to talk about their lives, jobs and writing experience to help them elevate their bios and improve their chances on the query circuit.
Sharing your material for my feedback and possibly benefitting from a one-on-one phone consultation with me are benefits reserved for paid subscribers. If you’d like to join us in workshop land, please upgrade! I love getting to know my fellow writers in this way through their writing—it means a lot to me.
Without further ado, let’s get into Part One of best practices—and no-no’s—of biographical statements.
#1: “Which point of view should I write my bio in?”
If your bio is coming at the end of a query letter to an agent, it should be in the first person like the rest of the query. If it’s coming at the end of an artist statement or grant application that is already written in the first person, it should be in the first person as well. If you are submitting only the bio (for example through an online form) and the bio will be divorced from other supporting material about you and your project, it should be in third person. Bios on websites should be in the third person usually— it makes it easier for event organizers to pull your bio to introduce you at events. Same thing goes for bios delivered by email to event organizers and booksellers— put them in the third person so the host can read the bio exactly as it’s written.
#2: “How do I format my publications in my bio?”
Real talk: from reading your bios, it appears that some of you do not possess the doorstopper known as The Chicago Manual of Style. Your own publications need to be set off in quotes or italics or all caps so that your bio is easy to read and not a traffic jam of words. So:
I’m the author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and my work has been published in The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal and I live with my cat.
becomes →
I’m the author of “I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You” and my work has been published in The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal and I live with my cat.
If you are going for the CAPS LOCK button, use it sparingly so people don't think you are SCREAMING AT THEM. I like to use all caps for my titles that are short to set them apart from other book titles in the letter, such as my comp titles. So for example:
My second novel TOUCH complements the openminded criticisms of social media found in Jia Tolentino’s award-winning “Trick Mirror.”
Sometimes formatting options are limited in online forms and email, meaning you might not be able to use italics. Do what you can to make the bio and your bylines easy to read and comprehend.
#3: How long should my bio be?
If your bio is coming at the end of a query letter, it should be short: somewhere in the vicinity of 150 words, and it should support the material you’re querying (more about that later!). If the bio is a standalone piece of writing requested by residency or prize applications, word count limits will be given in the submission guidelines.
#4: Embrace the rule of 3 when citing accolades
You do not need to list each and every byline, writing conference, mentor or accolade you’ve ever received or worked with. Pick two or three as representatives. So:
I’ve had publications in Frosty Snow Cone Magazine, Bubblegum World, Wine Spectator, Cigar Daddy, AARP, Food & Wine, Reader’s Digest, Writer’s Digest, Digest’s Digest and O the Oprah Magazine becomes —>
My recipes and food criticism have appeared in O the Oprah Magazine and Food & Wine and other culinary outlets.
#5: “I don’t have an MFA / I don’t have any publications / I don’t have a lot of publications and I feel super weird about this. How should I reflect that in my bio?”
First of all, if you read through the bios that were sent in last week, you’ll see that many of us don’t have a formal education in creative writing. I don’t have an MFA myself, and while I went to college, I didn’t major in English or take writing workshops there.1 The days where an MFA was something of a “must” if you wanted to make it in publishing are behind us, especially given the dearth of good jobs available to MFA students post graduation. (One day I will share my negative feelings about the adjuncting system and college in general in America but today is not that day.)
Here’s an important consideration, so please listen up: You’re allowed to be a regular person doing their regular old best. You’re allowed to have a day job that might have nothing to do with creative writing. You’re allowed to be sixty-seven and unpublished. You’re allowed to be a stay-at-home mom dreaming up a sci-fi intergalactic romance while taking care of toddlers. You’re allowed to be a bartender, a waiter, unemployed, overemployed, happy, unhappy, in dire financial straits or rolling in some dough. You’re allowed to have a story that you are burning to tell regardless of where you come from, who you are, or the level of education you have or do not have.
The quality of your writing matters, yes. The structure and “sellability” of your project also matters. But you know what matters greatly to agents and editors? That you are a hard worker able to meet deadlines. That you are doing what you can to understand this industry and get a foothold in it. The way you signal that you are a determined, hardworking person is with something I call “The Aspirational Pivot.”
The Aspirational Pivot is a game changer, and it will improve not only your query letters and other public-facing material but also how you think about your writing life. Here is what it is:
