Inventing The Author
Four Steps to A Compelling Author Bio
NON-FICTION
Some examples of
good author biographies found on the cover or inside non-fiction books. Comments
to right indicate why the examples were chosen and what you might learn from
them.
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The
New Relocating Spouse’s Guide to Employment
Frances Bastress
(human resource nonfiction)
Francess
Bastress has spent nearly threedecades in the human resource development
field, working in private industry, government, academia and nonprofit
organizations. A former personnel administrator in private industry and a
certified career counselor, she has designed and conducted
employment-related training programs for a variety of audiences. She wrote
the Spouse Employment Workshop Manual – used worldwide by the
Army, Navy and Air Force – and is author of Teachers in New Careers:
Stories Successful Transitions.
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Plays on
professional experience more than academic qualifications. Mentions
organizations she has worked (ones the reader will have heard of).
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Customers.com – How to Create a
Profitable Business Strategy For the Internet and Beyond
Patricia B.
Seybold with Ronni T. Marshak (business nonfiction)
Patricia
B. Seybold is the founder and CEO of the Boston-based Patricia Seybold
Group, a worldwide business and technology consulting firm. Its clients
include Ameritech, Arthur Andersen, Clorox, Hewlett Packard, the
International Monteary Fund, Microsoft, State Street Bank and Warburg
Pincus.
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A consultant
with information to share. Mentions big-name companies she has worked
with. No mention of any other writing experience, but that’s OK, because
of the information she has to share.
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Re-Creating The Corporation – A
Design of Organizations for the 21st Century
Russell
L. Ackoff (business nonfiction)
Russell
L. Ackoff has spent most of his adult life thinking about how
organizations work – and, more importantly, how they should
work. His early pioneering studies of operations research set him on the
path of thinking of organizations as systems in which all the essential
parts are interrelated, and any change that is made to one part will
inevitably change the rest. He has explored the implications of that
seemingly simple, but profound, idea in a number of boks on the modern
organization and its ills. He has been called ‘one of the world’s most
innovative and insightful organizational thinkers’ (Noel Tichy). Now
emeritus at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he is
chair of Interact: The Institute for Interactive Management, a firm
dedicated to education, research, and consulting that he co-founded.
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Really
interesting academic bio. I’m including it because it is chatty, and
introduces you briefly to the author’s thesis (that he will be expanding
on in this book). Also notes that he is associated with a prestigious
institution and co-founded a company – all good qualifications for his
subject matter.
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The Bridge At Andau
James
A. Michener (political/current events nonfiction)
James
A. Michener personally helped many to escape after the Battle of Budapest,
and interviewed hundreds more in the blazing white heat of one of
history’s great moments. Here is the thrilling story of Hungary’s
revolution, told through the eyes of the people who made it, written with
impassioned eloquence by a truly great writer
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A mix of bio and
description, this adequately explains why you might want to read this
writer’s account. He was there and someone is calling him ‘truly
great’.
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copyright notice: all author bios are quoted as an
educational resources and quotes were taken directly from the books credited
above. No copyright is assumed by the author of this article. Comments on the
quoted material, copyright 2001 Julie Duffy
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