New to Haiku: How to Write a Poet Bio

You’ve finally broken into the haiku market of your dreams. Congratulations! But now the editor has asked you to write a poet bio. What do you say? How much detail should you include?

Writing a poet bio, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult things you will have to do as a publishing haiku poet. When I’ve asked my haiku friends, they all despise writing bios too, which is why I thought this might make a good topic for New to Haiku.

Why is writing a bio so hard? For one thing, we haiku poets have bios that are often significantly longer than our poems! And I suspect for many of us, our reluctance stems from the admonition we received in childhood: Don’t brag about yourself!

How can you share your accomplishments without sounding like you are bragging? Keep in mind that there is also a saying that if it’s true, then it’s not bragging. You are just providing information about your poetry journey.

As you read these writing tips below, please remember first and foremost that your poet bio is all about you. It is ultimately your choice how you present yourself to your readers.

I hope the following set of tips is helpful. I’ve tried to list them in the order that I consider them when I write my own bios.

• Read the editor or publisher’s guidelines carefully.

Some editors want you to include a bio with your submission; others ask for one once they’ve decided to publish your work. Some publications don’t include bios at all, but might ask for your social media handles. Keep your bio within the editor’s requested word count or line limits. If they ask for a four-sentence bio or to keep it under 100 words, give them that. You don’t want an editor to decide where to shorten your bio because it was too long!

• Consider the medium.

If the publication where your work will appear is a print journal, it may not make sense to include your social media handles. But if your work is published online, you could link to your blog or other online references about you. (I occasionally link to my bio at Poets & Writers, because it’s the most comprehensive list of published poetry that I have online.) If you are publishing in a journal that appears on social media, be sure to tag yourself in your bio.

• Tailor your bio to the publication.

Think of your bio as a mini specialty resume. You may want to use different bios for different publications. If you are writing to impress, you would include a different set of facts than if you are writing to be conversational or to highlight your hobbies. If the publication is serious or academic in nature, you might simply stick to the basics, but if the journal is quirky or has a specialty focus like sci-fi, you could add a fun fact about yourself or include a science fiction reference. You might also consider tailoring your bio based on the venue or sub-genre of the work you are publishing. A bio for a haibun publication might emphasize your other haibun work and focus less on your haiku accomplishments, for example.

For your very first poet bio, you can simply state who you are. Start with the place where you live or write; people are generally interested in knowing your basic background. This can also be helpful when trying to connect with local poets. After a few publications, you might list journals where your work has appeared. Once you have won an award or two, you can list those first. If you later hold a position within the haiku community, you might start there.

So, to put these steps into practice, my pre-publication bio might read:

Julie Bloss Kelsey writes from her home in suburban Maryland, where she lives with her husband, kids, dog, and four fish. Connect with her on Instagram (@julieblosskelsey) or Bluesky (@mamajoules.bsky.social).

Once I’ve had a publication or three, I could say:

Julie Bloss Kelsey writes from her home in suburban Maryland, where she lives with her husband, kids, dog, and four fish. Her work has appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and tinywords. Connect with her on Instagram (@julieblosskelsey) or Bluesky (@mamajoules.bsky.social).

Early on, you might list each publication in which you’ve appeared. But soon you’ll want to pick and choose which journals to highlight. I think listing 3 or 4 is a good smattering. Given time, you might include both journal publications and contest wins, or just focus on contest wins. Again, I find fewer is better rather than overloading your reader. With contest placements, I like to list the most recent and/or highest placing. Let’s say this bio will appear in print, so I’ll take out my social media handles:

 Julie Bloss Kelsey writes from her home in suburban Maryland, where she lives with her husband, kids, dog, and four fish. In 2024, she won the Katanogahara Monogatari Prize in the 5th Star Haiku Contest and a Sakura Award in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational.

As you move through your time as a haiku poet, you will likely add achievements that you may feel supercede your individual haiku publications and awards:

Julie Bloss Kelsey is the current Secretary of The Haiku Foundation, where she writes a column for beginning haiku poets, New to Haiku. Her first print poetry collection, Grasping the Fading Light, won the 2021 International Women’s Haiku Contest from Sable Books.

As you grow as a poet, you might list editorial positions, times you have judged a contest, presentations you’ve given, and/or books or chapbooks you’ve had published instead of (or ahead of) contest wins and single poem publications. Generally speaking, you’ll probably want to list your most recent and biggest accomplishments first.

However, this is just a loose order of suggested guidelines. Only you can decide what is best for your bio. Some poets choose to use the same one sentence bio for every publication. There is nothing wrong with this (although I will say it isn’t the norm).

I want to point out that none of the bios I that have shared above are factually wrong. Theoretically, I could use any of them. That’s what makes writing and editing a good poet bio so tricky. This brings us to our final consideration.

• Ask yourself: Who is reading my bio? What do I want or need them to know about me?

When writing a poet bio, it can help to take the focus off yourself and place it on your reader. Include information that you think would be helpful to your audience. If your bio will appear online and you want to be easy to contact, be sure to include your website and/or social media handles. You might link to other published writing you have online, services you offer, or presentations you’ve given.

If you are publishing your work in a specialty market or a non-haiku journal, you might tailor your bio to fit the genre or subject. This is an early bio of mine that I used for an online science-leaning poetry publication:

Julie Bloss Kelsey didn’t realize how much she enjoyed short form poetry until she discovered Fibonacci poems and scifaiku. Her poetry has recently been published in AlienSkin Magazine, Outshine, Nanoism, and Scifaikuest. Julie also enjoys writing magazine articles, creative nonfiction, and short stories for children. You can visit her online at Mama Joules, her family-friendly science blog, or Stars in my Sugar Bowl, her poetry blog.

You might notice that in addition to my sci-fi credits, my bio above is a bit wordy and quite conversational. I might whittle this down were I to write it today, but I still usually aim for “friendly” when writing bios. Historically, I’ve thrown a couple of “fun facts” into my less formal bios: I collect Hard Rock Café shot glasses and I enjoy iced decaf lattes. (Sadly, this has not garnered me the coffee meetups and shot glass donations that I had hoped for!)

If you are trying to sell books or other services, you can reference them in your bio. And while it never hurts to stick to writing-related items, you don’t have to. (At the time I wrote the bio above, I was hoping to be a paid science blogger. While this career trajectory didn’t pan out, I did once manage to sell ad space on my blog that allowed me to buy a set of dishes!)

I wish you every success on your writing journey, and I hope that you accumulate many interesting facts to add to your poet bio.

What do you think should be included in a poet bio? Do you agree with my suggestions? Let me know in the comments!

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My thanks to Kat Lehmann and John Kelsey for reviewing an early draft of this essay. Any remaining typos, errors, or confusing phrasing is unfortunately all mine.