Hey blogo-maniacs. Remember me?

I used to write things on here about books, other books, and my thoughts on Personal Pan Pizzas. Then I started teaching again and now suddenly I can’t be found on the internet. All my Facebook friends have erased my face from their face collections. And other bloggers are all like: hey man, we haven’t seen you hanging around the blogo-verse lately. What gives, man? You too good for blogs or something?

The answer, my friends, is no. I’m not too good for anything. So, lay off. I’ve just been on a mini-break, preparing to teach the nation’s youth about literature and making the world a better place. Now I’m back, and will hopefully be writing about sufficiently dorked-out book-related topics again on a regular basis. Starting tonight. So take a deep breath, and let it out. Ahhhhhh. The internet is complete again.

And I want to ease back into my blog-bath with a very short and succinct topic: the sensitive art of the author bio.

You all know what an author bio is: it’s that little paragraph right underneath the black & white photo of the author in a rugged woolen sweater,  hugging his/her labrador retriever named Euripedes. Underneath that, it usually says where the author has studied, where he/she has published, what awards he/she’s won, if he/she was once a viable presidential candidate or the winner of a daytime Emmy, or is currently dead.

It’s a tiny little summation of a life in letters. Kind of like an end-of-the-book obituary, I suppose. Only sometimes the writer is still alive! So, it’s a happier version. Hurray!  Look at Peter and Euripedes, smiling away!

Anyway, I’m surprised how often I turn to this little part of the book right away when starting something new. This probably makes me shallow in some sense (I can’t bear to read something if I don’t know what the author looks like in a sweater vest, or if he lives in Oregon). But, I’m also surprised at how bored I usually am by the content. Blah blah NEA grant. Blah Blah Nobel Peace…whatever.

I used to try to do my own humble part to make these bios more interesting whenever I published a short story in an obscure literary magazine (long live obscure literary magazines!). I would say something normal first then add something about my love for diving at public pools or what particular brand of horror film I was enjoying lately. Or even what I was being paid at my current lousy job (for the record, my current job is no longer lousy). Anything to break up the monotony. But now that I have recieved a galley copy of my own book, I finally know why author bios are boring.

I know because I thought about writing a really witty or ironic bio to go underneath my black & white photo, but then I chickened out.

Here’s why: If other people are shallow like me (in only this one way of course) they’re going to turn back to my bio first and see the asinine thing I wrote back there. Something like: Peter Bognanni remembers his first Atari better than he remembers high school. Or another equally dumb few sentences. Then, that’s going to color their opinion of me and my book all the way through. At each turn, they’ll say to themselves, “I’m starting to get into this, but…this is that same jerk who wrote that thing under his jerky picture.” Then they’ll turn on my characters and my story and donate my book to their local prison.

I’m now convinced that other authors keep their bios boring for this same reason. Either that, or writers are, at heart, incredibly boring people, and all they do is sit around writing books or complaining about not writing books, and they really don’t have much else to list under their photos.

Either way, if I ever start a Twitter account it’s going to be a live and up-to-date author bio. That’s decided.

My first entry: Peter just drank some wine and ate a handful of candy corn. Why? If he knew, he would know the secret to it all.

October 14th, 2009  •  Uncategorized  •