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How to Write a Biography

Last Updated: April 13, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Stephanie Wong Ken, MFA . Stephanie Wong Ken is a writer based in Canada. Stephanie's writing has appeared in Joyland, Catapult, Pithead Chapel, Cosmonaut's Avenue, and other publications. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Creative Writing from Portland State University. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,859,133 times.

Writing a biography can be a fun challenge, where you are sharing the story of someone’s life with readers. You may need to write a biography for a class or decide to write one as a personal project. Once you have identified the subject of the biography, do your research so you know as much about them as possible. Then, dive into the writing of the biography and revising it until it is at its finest.

Researching Your Subject

• If the subject does not give you permission to write the biography, you may want to choose a different subject. If you decide to publish the biography without the subject’s permission, you may be susceptible to legal action by the subject.
• If the subject is no longer alive, you obviously do not need to ask permission to write about them.

• You may create research questions to help focus your research of the subject, such as, What do I find interesting about the subject? Why is this subject important to readers? What can I say that is new about the subject? What would I like to learn more about?

• For in person interviews, record them with a tape recorder or a voice recorder on your computer or phone.
• You may need to interview the subject and others several times to get the material you need.

• You may also want to visit areas where the subject made a major decision or breakthrough in their life. Being physically in the area can give you a sense of how the subject might have felt and help you write their experiences more effectively.

• When researching the time period ask yourself: What were the social norms of that time? What was going on economically and politically? How did the social and political climate affect the subject?

• You may also include historical events or moments that affected the subject on the timeline. For example, maybe there was a conflict or civil war that happened during the person’s life that affected their life.

Writing the Biography

• You may end up focusing on particular areas of the person’s life. If you do this, work through a particular period in the person’s life chronologically.

• For example, you may have a thesis statement about focusing on how the person impacted the civil rights movement in America in the 1970s. You can then make sure all your content relates back to this thesis.

• Flashbacks should feel as detailed and real as present day scenes. Use your research notes and interviews with the subject to get a good sense of their past for the flashbacks.
• For example, you may jump from the person’s death in the present to a flashback to their favorite childhood memory.

• For example, you may focus on the person’s accomplishments in the civil rights movement. You may write a whole section about their contributions and participation in major civil rights marches in their hometown.

• For example, you may notice that the person’s life is patterned with moments of adversity, where the person worked hard and fought against larger forces. You can then use the theme of overcoming adversity in the biography.

• For example, you may note how you see parallels in the person’s life during the civil rights movement with your own interests in social justice. You may also commend the person for their hard work and positive impact on society.

Polishing the Biography

• Revise the biography based on feedback from others. Do not be afraid to cut or edit down the biography to suit the needs of your readers.

• Having a biography riddled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors can turn off your readers and result in a poor grade if you are handing in the text for a class.

• If the biography is for a class, use MLA , APA , or Chicago Style citations based on the preferences of your instructor.

Biography Help

Community Q&A

• Be careful when publishing private or embarrassing information, especially if the person is not a celebrity. You may violate their "Right of Privacy" or equivalent. Thanks Helpful 31 Not Helpful 5
• Have the sources to back up your statements about the subject's life. Untruthful written statements can lead to litigation. If it is your opinion, be clear that it is such and not fact (although you can support your opinion with facts). Thanks Helpful 16 Not Helpful 15

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• ↑ https://au.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-write-a-bio
• ↑ https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/writing/how-to-write-a-biography.html
• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/3-tips-for-writing-successful-flashbacks
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-bio/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
• ↑ https://www.plagiarism.org/article/how-do-i-cite-sources

About This Article

Before you write a biography, gather as much information about the subject that you can from sources like newspaper articles, interviews, photos, existing biographies, and anything else you can find. Write the story of that person’s life, including as much supporting detail as you can, including information about the place and time where the person lived. Focus on major events and milestones in their life, including historical events, marriage, children, and events which would shape their path later in life. For tips from our reviewer on proofreading the biography and citing your sources, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Jun 30, 2023

How to Write a Biography: A 7-Step Guide [+Template]

From time to time, nonfiction authors become so captivated by a particular figure from either the present or the past, that they feel compelled to write an entire book about their life. Whether casting them as heroes or villains, there is an interesting quality in their humanity that compels these authors to revisit their life paths and write their story.

However, portraying someone’s life on paper in a comprehensive and engaging way requires solid preparation. If you’re looking to write a biography yourself, in this post we’ll share a step-by-step blueprint that you can follow. 

How to write a biography: 

1. Seek permission when possible 

2. research your subject thoroughly, 3. do interviews and visit locations, 4. organize your findings, 5. identify a central thesis, 6. write it using narrative elements, 7. get feedback and polish the text.

FREE RESOURCE

Biography Outline Template

Craft a satisfying story arc for your biography with our free template.

While you technically don’t need permission to write about public figures (or deceased ones), that doesn't guarantee their legal team won't pursue legal action against you. Author Kitty Kelley was sued by Frank Sinatra before she even started to write His Way , a biography that paints Ol Blue Eyes in a controversial light. (Kelley ended up winning the lawsuit, however).  

Whenever feasible, advise the subject’s representatives of your intentions. If all goes according to plan, you’ll get a green light to proceed, or potentially an offer to collaborate. It's a matter of common sense; if someone were to write a book about you, you would likely want to know about it well prior to publication. So, make a sincere effort to reach out to their PR staff to negotiate an agreement or at least a mutual understanding of the scope of your project. 

At the same time, make sure that you still retain editorial control over the project, and not end up writing a puff piece that treats its protagonist like a saint or hero. No biography can ever be entirely objective, but you should always strive for a portrayal that closely aligns with facts and reality.

If you can’t get an answer from your subject, or you’re asked not to proceed forward, you can still accept the potential repercussions and write an unauthorized biography . The “rebellious act” of publishing without consent indeed makes for great marketing, though it’ll likely bring more headaches with it too. 

✋ Please note that, like other nonfiction books, if you intend to release your biography with a publishing house , you can put together a book proposal to send to them before you even write the book. If they like it enough, they might pay you an advance to write it.  

Book Proposal Template

Craft a professional pitch for your nonfiction book with our handy template.

Once you’ve settled (or not) the permission part, it’s time to dive deep into your character’s story.  

Deep and thorough research skills are the cornerstone of every biographer worth their salt. To paint a vivid and accurate portrait of someone's life, you’ll have to gather qualitative information from a wide range of reliable sources. 

Start with the information already available, from books on your subject to archival documents, then collect new ones firsthand by interviewing people or traveling to locations. 

Browse the web and library archives

Put your researcher hat on and start consuming any piece on your subject you can find, from their Wikipedia page to news articles, interviews, TV and radio appearances, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, magazines, and any other media outlets they may have been featured in. 

Establish a system to orderly collect the information you find 一 even seemingly insignificant details can prove valuable during the writing process, so be sure to save them. 

Depending on their era, you may find most of the information readily available online, or you may need to search through university libraries for older references. 

For his landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow spent untold hours at Columbia University’s library , reading through the Hamilton family papers, visiting the New York Historical Society, as well as interviewing the archivist of the New York Stock Exchange, and so on. The research process took years, but it certainly paid off. Chernow discovered that Hamilton created the first five securities originally traded on Wall Street. This finding, among others, revealed his significant contributions to shaping the current American financial and political systems, a legacy previously often overshadowed by other founding fathers. Today Alexander Hamilton is one of the best-selling biographies of all time, and it has become a cultural phenomenon with its own dedicated musical. 

Besides reading documents about your subject, research can help you understand the world that your subject lived in. 

Try to understand their time and social environment

Many biographies show how their protagonists have had a profound impact on society through their philosophical, artistic, or scientific contributions. But at the same time, it’s worth it as a biographer to make an effort to understand how their societal and historical context influenced their life’s path and work.

An interesting example is Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World . Finding himself limited by a lack of verified detail surrounding William Shakespeare's personal life, Greenblatt, instead, employs literary interpretation and imaginative reenactments to transport readers back to the Elizabethan era. The result is a vivid (though speculative) depiction of the playwright's life, enriching our understanding of his world.

Many readers enjoy biographies that transport them to a time and place, so exploring a historical period through the lens of a character can be entertaining in its own right. The Diary of Samuel Pepys became a classic not because people were enthralled by his life as an administrator, but rather from his meticulous and vivid documentation of everyday existence during the Restoration period.

Once you’ve gotten your hands on as many secondary sources as you can find, you’ll want to go hunting for stories first-hand from people who are (or were) close to your subject.

With all the material you’ve been through, by now you should already have a pretty good picture of your protagonist. But you’ll surely have some curiosities and missing dots in their character arc to figure out, which you can only get by interviewing primary sources.

Interview friends and associates

This part is more relevant if your subject is contemporary, and you can actually meet up or call with relatives, friends, colleagues, business partners, neighbors, or any other person related to them. 

In writing the popular biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson interviewed more than one hundred people, including Jobs’s family, colleagues, former college mates, business rivals, and the man himself.

🔍 Read other biographies to get a sense of what makes a great one. Check out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time , or take our 30-second quiz below for tips on which one you should read next. 

Which biography should you read next?

Discover the perfect biography for you. Takes 30 seconds!

When you conduct your interviews, make sure to record them with high quality audio you can revisit later. Then use tools like Otter.ai or Descript to transcribe them 一 it’ll save you countless hours. 

You can approach the interview with a specific set of questions, or follow your curiosity blindly, trying to uncover revealing stories and anecdotes about your subject. Whatever your method, author and biography editor Tom Bromley suggests that every interviewer arrives prepared, "Show that you’ve done your work. This will help to put the interviewee at ease, and get their best answers.” 

Bromley also places emphasis on the order in which you conduct interviews. “You may want to interview different members of the family or friends first, to get their perspective on something, and then go directly to the main interviewee. You'll be able to use that knowledge to ask sharper, more specific questions.” 

Finally, consider how much time you have with each interviewee. If you only have a 30-minute phone call with an important person, make it count by asking directly the most pressing questions you have. And, if you find a reliable source who is also particularly willing to help, conduct several interviews and ask them, if appropriate, to write a foreword as part of the book’s front matter .

Sometimes an important part of the process is packing your bags, getting on a plane, and personally visiting significant places in your character’s journey.

Visit significant places in their life

A place, whether that’s a city, a rural house, or a bodhi tree, can carry a particular energy that you can only truly experience by being there. In putting the pieces together about someone’s life, it may be useful to go visit where they grew up, or where other significant events of their lives happened. It will be easier to imagine what they experienced, and better tell their story. 

In researching The Lost City of Z , author David Grann embarked on a trek through the Amazon, retracing the steps of British explorer Percy Fawcett. This led Grann to develop new theories about the circumstances surrounding the explorer's disappearance.

Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with jaguars and anacondas to better understand your subject’s environment, but try to walk into their shoes as much as possible. 

Once you’ve researched your character enough, it’s time to put together all the puzzle pieces you collected so far. 

Take the bulk of notes, media, and other documents you’ve collected, and start to give them some order and structure. A simple way to do this is by creating a timeline. 

Create a chronological timeline

It helps to organize your notes chronologically 一 from childhood to the senior years, line up the most significant events of your subject’s life, including dates, places, names and other relevant bits. 

You should be able to divide their life into distinct periods, each with their unique events and significance. Based on that, you can start drafting an outline of the narrative you want to create.  

Draft a story outline 

Since a biography entails writing about a person’s entire life, it will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can pick where you want to end the story, depending on how consequential the last years of your subject were. But the nature of the work will give you a starting character arc to work with. 

To outline the story then, you could turn to the popular Three-Act Structure , which divides the narrative in three main parts. In a nutshell, you’ll want to make sure to have the following:

• Act 1. Setup : Introduce the protagonist's background and the turning points that set them on a path to achieve a goal. 
• Act 2. Confrontation : Describe the challenges they encounter, both internal and external, and how they rise to them. Then..
• Act 3. Resolution : Reach a climactic point in their story in which they succeed (or fail), showing how they (and the world around them) have changed as a result. 

Only one question remains before you begin writing: what will be the main focus of your biography?

Think about why you’re so drawn to your subject to dedicate years of your life to recounting their own. What aspect of their life do you want to highlight? Is it their evil nature, artistic genius, or visionary mindset? And what evidence have you got to back that up? Find a central thesis or focus to weave as the main thread throughout your narrative. 

Or find a unique angle

If you don’t have a particular theme to explore, finding a distinct angle on your subject’s story can also help you distinguish your work from other biographies or existing works on the same subject.

Plenty of biographies have been published about The Beatles 一 many of which have different focuses and approaches: 

• Philip Norman's Shout is sometimes regarded as leaning more towards a pro-Lennon and anti-McCartney stance, offering insights into the band's inner dynamics. 
• Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head closely examines their music track by track, shifting the focus back to McCartney as a primary creative force. 
• Craig Brown's One Two Three Four aims to capture their story through anecdotes, fan letters, diary entries, and interviews. 
• Mark Lewisohn's monumental three-volume biography, Tune In , stands as a testament to over a decade of meticulous research, chronicling every intricate detail of the Beatles' journey.

Finally, consider that biographies are often more than recounting the life of a person. Similar to how Dickens’ Great Expectations is not solely about a boy named Pip (but an examination and critique of Britain’s fickle, unforgiving class system), a biography should strive to illuminate a broader truth — be it social, political, or human — beyond the immediate subject of the book. 

Once you’ve identified your main focus or angle, it’s time to write a great story. 

While biographies are often highly informative, they do not have to be dry and purely expository in nature . You can play with storytelling elements to make it an engaging read. 

You could do that by thoroughly detailing the setting of the story , depicting the people involved in the story as fully-fledged characters , or using rising action and building to a climax when describing a particularly significant milestone of the subject’s life. 

One common way to make a biography interesting to read is starting on a strong foot…

Hook the reader from the start

Just because you're honoring your character's whole life doesn't mean you have to begin when they said their first word. Starting from the middle or end of their life can be more captivating as it introduces conflicts and stakes that shaped their journey.

When he wrote about Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild , author Jon Krakauer didn’t open his subject’s childhood and abusive family environment. Instead, the book begins with McCandless hitchhiking his way into the wilderness, and subsequently being discovered dead in an abandoned bus. By starting in medias res , Krakauer hooks the reader’s interest, before tracing back the causes and motivations that led McCandless to die alone in that bus in the first place.

You can bend the timeline to improve the reader’s reading experience throughout the rest of the story too…

Play with flashback 

While biographies tend to follow a chronological narrative, you can use flashbacks to tell brief stories or anecdotes when appropriate. For example, if you were telling the story of footballer Lionel Messi, before the climax of winning the World Cup with Argentina, you could recall when he was just 13 years old, giving an interview to a local newspaper, expressing his lifelong dream of playing for the national team. 

Used sparsely and intentionally, flashbacks can add more context to the story and keep the narrative interesting. Just like including dialogue does…

Reimagine conversations

Recreating conversations that your subject had with people around them is another effective way to color the story. Dialogue helps the reader imagine the story like a movie, providing a deeper sensory experience. 

One thing is trying to articulate the root of Steve Jobs’ obsession with product design, another would be to quote his father , teaching him how to build a fence when he was young: “You've got to make the back of the fence just as good looking as the front of the fence. Even though nobody will see it, you will know. And that will show that you're dedicated to making something perfect.”

Unlike memoirs and autobiographies, in which the author tells the story from their personal viewpoint and enjoys greater freedom to recall conversations, biographies require a commitment to facts. So, when recreating dialogue, try to quote directly from reliable sources like personal diaries, emails, and text messages. You could also use your interview scripts as an alternative to dialogue. As Tom Bromley suggests, “If you talk with a good amount of people, you can try to tell the story from their perspective, interweaving different segments and quoting the interviewees directly.”

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These are just some of the story elements you can use to make your biography more compelling. Once you’ve finished your manuscript, it’s a good idea to ask for feedback. 

If you’re going to self-publish your biography, you’ll have to polish it to professional standards. After leaving your work to rest for a while, look at it with fresh eyes and self-edit your manuscript eliminating passive voice, filler words, and redundant adverbs. 

Then, have a professional editor give you a general assessment. They’ll look at the structure and shape of your manuscript and tell you which parts need to be expanded on or cut. As someone who edited and commissioned several biographies, Tom Bromley points out that a professional “will look at the sources used and assess whether they back up the points made, or if more are needed. They would also look for context, and whether or not more background information is needed for the reader to understand the story fully. And they might check your facts, too.”  

In addition to structural editing, you may want to have someone copy-edit and proofread your work.

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Importantly, make sure to include a bibliography with a list of all the interviews, documents, and sources used in the writing process. You’ll have to compile it according to a manual of style, but you can easily create one by using tools like EasyBib . Once the text is nicely polished and typeset in your writing software , you can prepare for the publication process.  

In conclusion, by mixing storytelling elements with diligent research, you’ll be able to breathe life into a powerful biography that immerses readers in another individual’s life experience. Whether that’ll spark inspiration or controversy, remember you could have an important role in shaping their legacy 一 and that’s something not to take lightly. 

Continue reading

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• Writing biographies

How to Collect and Record Memories

Writing family biographies in just 7 easy steps, let’s start with all your concerns about writing biographies:.

• “I don’t have time to do this.”
• “I’m not a writer.”
• “I’m not creative. My brain doesn’t work this way.”
• “I don’t know where to begin.”
• “No one wants to read my memories.”
• “Nobody cares about our family stories.”
• “This is going to be sooo hard.”

Sorry to be blunt, but these are pretty weak excuses … Collecting and recording your family stories and biographies does not require one bit of professional writing skills, creativity, publishing know-how, or any other special skills.

Anyone, and everyone, can and should do this!

The only requirement to record and preserve family stories and biographies is that you passionately care about your family..

Do you love them? Do you want to show them that love? Do you want future generations of your family to understand who they came from and what was important to the family?

That’s what we thought.

You’re doing this. Let’s get started !

7 easy steps to collect, record, and preserve your stories.

Here are the seven easy steps you’ll follow to collect, record, and preserve your family stories and biographies. Each step has free resources and tools to help keep you moving.

Step 1: Collect stories and memories

Step 2: collect photographs, step 3: collect other artifacts, step 4: write an outline.

Step 5: Arrange stories and images

Step 6: Pick a format

Step 7: Print and enjoy!

This can be one of the most time-consuming, but enjoyable steps of your family memories or biography project – collecting the stories! There are many ways to do this:

• Write down your own life memories
• Write down your favorite family stories
• Write down your memories about a specific family member
• Interview a family member about his/her life and memories
• Interview several family members about a loved one who has passed away
• Interview many family members about a beloved (and still living) family member

Collect as many memories and stories as you can. You’ll edit and prioritize later. Right now you just want to get them typed into your computer! When you’re writing your own memories, start with our 200+ interview questions to get you started. If you don’t have a computer or aren’t fond of typing, you can write your memories on paper and sweet talk a friend or family member into typing them.

Another option is speaking your memories into a recording device, like your smartphone or a small voice recorder. You can transcribe your notes or pay for a transcription service. It’s well worth the $1/minute fee many of them charge. Go to the Resources page for recommendations on voice recording apps and transcription services.

Nothing complements your heartfelt memories and beloved family stories like good photographs of the people and places in them. Unlike collecting memories and stories, too many photographs can quickly send you down a rabbit hole and stall your project.

Don’t go for quantity, go for quality photos. List the most prominent people mentioned in your memories and stories and look for a few relevant, high-quality photographs for each. It’s nice to have a mix of old and current photos. Now list some of the major events and places in your stories and memories. If you have sharp, high-quality photographs of these exact places or events, add them to your photo pile.

Once you have your photos, you’ll need to scan printed photos so you have digital versions of them. It’s likely any current photos will already be digital files. Head over to the Resources page for tips on how to scan photos.

There’s no need to dig deeper and search for related artifacts, but some people like to include them. What are artifacts? An artifact is a printed item that relates to the people, places, or events in your stories.

Common artifacts include:

• Newspaper articles
• Pictures, paintings, or other artwork
• Handwritten or typed letters, cards, notes, stories, inscriptions, etc.
• Event programs, ticket stubs, autographs
• Official documents, like licenses, diplomas, etc.
• Maps, brochures, travel guides, itineraries
• Anything else interesting you find!

Like photographs, hunting for artifacts can quickly eat up time and delay your project. If you find them and they’re relevant to your story, awesome! But don’t worry if you can’t find them, or don’t want to. These artifacts can always be collected in an envelope and kept with your memory book.

If you find artifacts that you want to use in your memory book, you will need to scan them and create digital files. Look at the Resources page for recommendations on how to scan artifacts.

You’ve now collected everything for your memory or biography book. Good job! The hardest part is now finished. The rest of your project will go more quickly. Read some inspirational biographies to get started. There’s one key tip to remember at this stage: don’t overthink it.

Keep your memory or biography project outline simple and straightforward. There are a couple of ways to write your memory or biography book outline:

• Chronologically – This can be an easy, no-nonsense way to organize your stories: put them in the order they occurred.
• Life stages – Instead of trying to determine what years each story occurred, just group them together by major life stages: childhood, adolescence, young adult, career, retirement, etc.
• Major events – Similar to life stages, this approach will group your memories and stories by significant life events, like birthdays, school years, weddings/anniversaries, births, deaths, vacations, career/jobs, military service, etc.
• Family members – Thinking about your readers (your family members) one of the nicest ways to organize your memories are by them! You could have a chapter for each family member, or group them by generation, like parents, siblings, spouse, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth.
• Random – For all you free spirits out there, this style is for you! This approach is less about organizing by topic, and more about creating many chapters of random, unrelated but interesting stories.

Step 5: Arrange your stories and images

Now it’s time to arrange your stories into one document. Your outline will be a good starting place, but you might decide there’s a better way to organize them. Don’t be afraid to change it and try different approaches. Your goal is simply to make it easy and enjoyable to read. There is no right or wrong way to do this.

When you’re finished, you’ll have a big document with a lot of text. Nobody, not even your loving family who is interested in these stories, wants to read page after page of text. It’s time to make your stories more reader-friendly.

Depending on how you organize your biography or memory book, there are different writer’s tricks you can add to really make your stories shine. Consider adding:

• Headlines and subheads: Write a headline and subhead for each section or story. This lets the reader quickly scan and understand what they’ll learn.
• Pull quotes: These are super interesting quotations you want to emphasize and draw attention to. For now, just highlight, underline or bold the quotes or sentences you might want to emphasize.
• Sidebars/information in a box: Sometimes you have an interesting tidbit about a place or event that doesn’t quite fit into your story. Turn these facts or historical research into a sidebar. Again, don’t worry about the design, just find and label paragraphs that would make good sidebars.
• More paragraphs: If you’re looking at your document and there is a wall of text with no paragraph breaks, you need to add some. Don’t worry about grammar rules – this is about making your text easier to read.
• Space between stories: Add more white space between stories or sections in your book.
• Lists: A great way to quickly educate and entertain a reader is by turning big blocks of text into a list. Look for paragraphs that could become a list of bullet points.

Now it’s time to match up photos and artifacts to your stories. No need to insert your digital images into your document. Instead, list the photo or artifact file names you want to use at the start of the corresponding story. This makes the design process much easier and faster.

Check out our story template in the Resources section for an example of how to set up your document.

Step 6: Pick a format for your project

It’s time to decide how you want to finish this biography or memory book project. You’ve put a lot of work and effort into these memories and family stories, and they deserve a high-quality finish! There are so many do-it-yourself publishing companies that make it easy and affordable to design and print hardcover copies of your biography or memory book. See our top recommendations for book printers in the Resources section.

Here are a few options and the general cost of each:

• Basically free: Design the book yourself, print it at home, and preserve your hard work in a nice binder or folder.
• Inexpensive: Design the book yourself, print it at a local copy shop, and have them add a clear or vinyl front cover, coil bind, or other finishing options.
• Moderately expensive: Use an online printing service to design and print a soft- or hard-cover book.
• More expensive: Hire a company like Circa Legacy to edit, design, and print your biography or memory book for you.

Step 7: Print your project

Hip hip hooray!!!! You did it! You’ve created an amazing gift for yourself, you family, and future generations. You should be so proud of yourself! All that’s left is to print multiple copies of your beautiful biography or memory book and present it to your family members.

This is no regular gift. You poured your heart and soul into this. Don’t just shyly slide it over to them at the end of a family dinner. Put it in a box or nice envelope. Wrap it. Include a little note about why this was an important project for you and what you hope they will get out of it. And then, you can give it to them.

Have a friend or family member who wants to write an autobiography or memory book but doesn’t know where to start? Take a look at our Products page for fun and easy do-it-yourself story kits to help them get started.

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Andre Gerard's top 10 father memoirs

The concept of father memoirs is a fascinating one. Confronting fathers directly and publicly is not, and never has been, easy: the patriarch should judge and not be judged. To write about the father is to sit in judgment upon him, and for most cultures this was a taboo too strong to be overcome. The Greeks, despite their searingly perceptive stories about father-child interactions, did not attempt to do so – nor did the Romans, the Italians of the Renaissance, the Elizabethans or even the Romantics. Paradoxically – but not surprisingly, given the rigid paternalism of the age and the attendant psychological pressures – personal father writing, like radical feminism, is a product of the Victorian era.

In 1907, six years after the death of Queen Victoria, Edmund Gosse published Father and Son. Once the taboo was broken, writers were quick to take advantage of the new possibilities. The 20th century saw a steady increase in the number of father memoirs and, now that the boomers are ageing and seeking to immortalise themselves, such memoirs are becoming as ubiquitous as tattoos. As with tattoos, some are visceral works of art. The 10 books described below give an idea of how poignant, rich and rewarding father memoirs can be.

1: Father and Son by Edmund Gosse

The first of all father memoirs, this is still one of the best. Interestingly, Gosse's first attempt to write about his father took the form of an official biography. Written shortly after his father's death on 23 August 1888, The Life of Philip Henry Gosse was admired by Henry James as "a singularly clever, skilful, vivid, well-done biography of his father, the fanatic and naturalist – very happy in proportion, tact and talent". Luckily, at least two other readers – John Addington Symonds and George Moore – suggested that Gosse should be more autobiographical and explore the father-son relationship.

Almost 20 years later, Gosse unburdened himself of Father and Son. Though the book was an immediate success and the reviews were largely enthusiastic, the reviewer of the Academy had reservations about the "close anatomisation by a son of a father", and the Times Literary Supplement raised the question of "how far in the interests of popular edification or amusement it is legitimate to expose the weaknesses and inconsistencies of a good man who is also one's father". Perhaps not always fortunately, subsequent writers, far more frank and confessional, showed far fewer qualms in writing about their fathers.

2: Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

As Art Spiegelman proved with Maus , father memoirs can take graphic narrative form. Courageously original and lovingly honest, Fun Home is a coming-of-age story – a story of lesbian self-discovery – which also outs the father posthumously as a closeted gay man and a possible suicide. In intertwining her father's story with her own, Bechdel is conscious of being as ruthless as her father was in "his monomaniacal restoration of our old house". She, too, is a Daedalus, who answers "not to the laws of society, but to those of [her] craft".

Profoundly personal, Fun Home is also mythic. From the opening page onwards, it is a rich affirmation of Stephen Dedalus's closing words in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man: "Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." This affirmation is triumphantly validated by "the tricky reverse narration" of Fun Home's final panels, in which Bechdel's artistically resurrected, epic father is there to catch and save her child self.

3: The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father, by Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon sketches a passionate portrait of a deeply flawed man, a shabby pornographer with literary pretensions, a convert to Christianity who was so ashamed of his immigrant and Jewish origins that he hid his past and became a nasty antisemite and a writer of speeches for Joe McCarthy. In the course of investigating her father's life and of reflecting on the motives for her search, she also had his bones dug up and reburied.

The intensity of her obsession with her father, who died when she was only seven, is terrifying – yet readily understandable. The father of her childhood, after all, was not a real human being. He was a fairytale father, an Angela Carter father, a "magic uncle", a Pied Piper strewing candy and trailing kids. In trying to find her "real" father, in trying to come to terms with the lies her father told her, Gordon confesses: "I have done things to my father. I have remembered him, researched him, investigated him, exposed him, invented him." The one thing she cannot do is exorcise him.

Gordon is a spiritual sister to Sylvia Plath – who lost her father when she was eight – and despite her ironies, her literary inventiveness, her distancing techniques, she cannot escape the curse of victimhood her father's early death bequeathed her.

4: There is a Season, by Patrick Lane

"I circle my father's death for a means to get close. I remember my Uncle Jack pushing my head into my father's coffin. The taste of lipstick and powder will stay on my lips for ever. Kiss him, he cried, Kiss your father goodbye." There is a cruel courage in how Patrick Lane dwells on the memory of his murdered father and voices pain and grief. In the breathtaking, breath-giving tradition of Derek Jarman's Modern Nature, There Is a Season turns to nature and gardens for healing from the hurtful, painful wonder of life. With this fierce book, Lane, fulfilling a promise he made in an early father poem, Fathers and Sons, reaches "down into the heavy earth" and sings his father "back into the day", and himself free of the poisons of drugs and alcohol. There Is a Season is a lyrical masterpiece to be treasured by all recovering alcoholics, avid gardeners and lovers of Annie Dillard and Thoreau.

5: Patrimony: A True Story, by Philip Roth

While Patrimony's title hints at a postmodern game, there is nothing playful about the clear-eyed, plain-spoken integrity with which Philip Roth observes his father's dying and remembers his father's life. The father lives on in the "modest no-frills style", and the book is remarkable as a strong tribute paid by a strong son to a strong father.

Despite simplicity of style, Patrimony is an epic, with Roth as a Hercules labouring on his father's behalf. In fierce, moving, often comic vignettes he takes on a ghoulish, hate-filled neighbour, a psychotic cab driver, denial of antisemitism by Metropolitan Life, a pornographic Holocaust survivor, a quintuple bypass, his father's shit, and, repeatedly, his father himself. In a previous book, The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography, Roth had said of his father that "narrative is the form his knowledge takes". In Patrimony, he links his father's narrative gifts to memory: "You mustn't forget anything – that's the inscription on his coat of arms. To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory – to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing."

Memory and narrative, along with the shit of "nothing less or more than lived reality", are Roth's patrimony – a patrimony he transmutes into this profound and heartfelt testament. Book, son and father merge into "the vernacular, unpoetic and expressive and pointblank, with all the vernacular's glaring limitations, and all its durable force".

6: Swing Low: A Life, by Miriam Toews

Many father memoirs are remarkable for their inventive excellence, but few are as original and as powerful as Swing Low. Miriam Toews imagines herself into her father's head, and brings him back to life as a narrative "I". Her imaginative accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that her father had bipolar disorder throughout his life, and eventually his depression became so deep and his mind so confused that he killed himself by stepping in front of a train.

Such a story would be horrific and depressing if it weren't for the calmness of the narrative voice. Toews's father was a Mennonite living and teaching in a small Manitoba town, and in her rendering of his interior life Toews also explores the tensions between self and community and teases out "the complicated kindness" that makes those tensions almost bearable. Despite the father's mental illness and suicide, Swing Low is a wonderfully sane and life-affirming book.

7: The Duke of Deception, by Geoffrey Wolff

"My father was a bullshit artist." Geoffrey Wolff's book about his scapegrace, conman father suggests you don't have to be a good father to have successful children; some children succeed despite their fathers. Wolff and his brother, Tobias, the author of This Boy's Life, are proof of that – as are, say, Winston Churchill or Michael and Christopher Ondaatje, three other highly successful men who have written wonderfully well about damaged, damaging fathers.

Father memoirs or essays sometimes provide the means for children to come to terms with negligent or destructive fathers. One strength of The Duke of Deception is the relish with which Wolff describes his father's failings. Wolff almost seems to take pride in the fact that his father was "lavish with money, others' money", and that he "was a lie, through and through". Yet there is nothing sentimental, mean or vindictive in Wolff's portrait of his father. In trying to make sense of his father and of himself, Wolff constantly tries to distinguish between "what we feel and what we should feel". The result is unflinchingly honest – a ruefully frank, loving testament and a brilliant book.

8: My Father's Fortune: A Life, by Michael Frayn

There are many kinds of father memoirs. Some are bitter and vindictive. Others are exercises in detection. Still others are meditations on disease or death. My Father's Fortune belongs to two further categories, the tribute patremoir and the sociological. Its closest peers, perhaps, are Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily and Alan Bennett's study of his father in Untold Stories . Like Lessing and Bennett, Frayn uses his father to study the impact of class, community and historical accident on a life. Through his father he vividly resurrects his East Ewell, Surrey, neighbourhood, along with the struggles and aspirations of London's citizens, both during the second world war and after. Like Bennett, too, he uses gentle humour to bring his father to life again, though where Bennett's father is defined by "my suit" and "my other suit", Frayn links his father to a black homburg, "the last homburg in south-east London, perhaps in western Europe". Beautifully written, a generous, loving tribute to a plucky father and the gritty world that shaped him, My Father's Fortune begins and ends with the father's smile.

9: My Two Wars, by Moritz Thomsen

Moritz Thomsen starts his book by saying: "This is a book about my involvement with two outrageous catastrophes – the second world war and my father." Had he limited himself to the second world war, he might well have produced a brilliant book. His account of flying B-17 sorties from a base near Cambridge is riveting, filled with "the normal self-loathing of a bombardier", and conjuring up a harrowing Hieronymus Bosch world in which "we were as sacred, as moral, as marvellous, as necessary to Earth's intentions as ants". It is the claustrophobic, nightmare world of Randall Jarrell 's ball turret gunner .

Where the book breaks down is in its handling of the father. The best patremoirs are difficult journeys of self-discovery, as much about the writer as the father. Even if you are a good writer, it takes perspective, if not maturity, to write well about your father; and for every good patremoir, there are dozens of bad ones, books that are only published because of topical or sensational secondary material – incest or Alzheimer's are popular subjects – or because the parent is a celebrity. My Two Wars is much better than such books, yet it is too angry and raw to achieve its full promise. Top 10 lists are arbitrary things, and this book is on my list because of what it might have been, rather than because of what it is.

10: The Measure of a Man: the Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit, by JJ Lee

JJ Lee's book is fashioned with wisdom and restraint. Like the violin in Thomas Hardy's To My Father's Violin , Lee's father's suit functions as an object on which to hang emotions. It provides depth and distance. Lee skilfully uses the history of suits, and his own attempts at tailoring, to show how we construct ourselves, how we fashion ourselves as men. Like James Baldwin or Raymond Carver, he is writing about a failed father, and emotional distance is necessary to guard against anger or destructive bitterness.

Part of the pleasure of this book is that tailoring is for Lee what whaling was for Melville, and as the patremoir progresses Lee's suit becomes charged with almost as much symbolism as the white of the whale. Even if Lee shows the slow and painful disintegration of his father, the ravages of alcohol, the consequent damage inflicted on wife and children, there is no bleakness or self-pity in the telling. Even if Lee's 89-year-old mentor and father surrogate was forced into tailoring by racism, and even if the Chinamen's cemetery in Montreal was "the place to bury the people no one really wanted around", the focus of this book is not racism. This is a story about self-fashioning, about taking what you have been given, or have been left, and making the best of it.

Andre Gerard is the founder of Patremoir Press and the editor of Fathers: a Literary Anthology

• Biography books
• Autobiography and memoir
• Philip Roth
• Michael Frayn

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How to Write an Interesting Biography

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A biography is a written account of the series of events that make up a person's life. Some of those events are going to be pretty boring, so you'll need to try to make your account as interesting as possible!

Every student will write a biography at some point, but the level of detail and sophistication will differ. A fourth grade biography will be much different from a middle school-level biography or a high school or college-level biography.

However, each biography will include the basic details. The first information you should gather in your research will include biographical details and facts. You must use a trustworthy resource to ensure that your information is accurate.

Using research note cards , collect the following data, carefully recording the source for each piece of information:

Including Basic Details

• Date and place of birth and death
• Family information
• Lifetime accomplishments
• Major events of life
• Effects/impact on society, historical significance

While this information is necessary to your project, these dry facts, on their own, don't really make a very good biography. Once you've found these basics, you'll want to dig a little deeper.

You choose a certain person because you think he or she is interesting, so you certainly don't want to burden your paper with an inventory of boring facts. Your goal is to impress your reader!

Start off with great first sentence . It's a good idea to begin with a really interesting statement, a little-known fact, or really intriguing event.

You should avoid starting out with a standard but boring line like:

"Meriwether Lewis was born in Virginia in 1774."

Instead, try starting with something like this:

"Late one afternoon in October, 1809, Meriwether Lewis arrived at a small log cabin nestled deep in the Tennessee Mountains. By sunrise on the following day, he was dead, having suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

You'll have to make sure your beginning is motivating, but it should also be relevant. The next sentence or two should lead into your thesis statement , or main message of your biography.

"It was a tragic end to a life that had so deeply affected the course of history in the United States. Meriwether Lewis, a driven and often tormented soul, led an expedition of discovery that expanded a young nation's economic potential, increased its scientific understanding, and enhanced its worldwide reputation."

Now that you've created an impressive beginning , you'll want to continue the flow. Find more intriguing details about the man and his work, and weave them into the composition.

Examples of Interesting Details:

• Some people believed that Lewis and Clark would encounter elephants in the western wilderness, having misunderstood the wooly mammoth bones discovered in the United States.
• The expedition resulted in the discovery and description of 122 new animal species and subspecies.
• Lewis was a hypochondriac.
• His death is still an unsolved mystery, although it was ruled a suicide.

You can find interesting facts by consulting diverse sources.

Fill the body of your biography with material that gives insight into your subject's personality. For instance, in a biography about Meriwether Lewis, you would ask what traits or events motivated him to embark on such a monumental exercise.

Questions to Consider in Your Biography:

• Was there something in your subject's childhood that shaped his/her personality?
• Was there a personality trait that drove him/her to succeed or impeded his progress?
• What adjectives would you use to describe him/her?
• What were some turning points in this life?
• What was his/her impact on history?

Be sure to use transitional phrases and words to link your paragraphs and make your composition paragraphs flow . It is normal for good writers to re-arrange their sentences to create a better paper.

The final paragraph will summarize your main points and re-assert your main claim about your subject. It should point out your main points, re-name the person you're writing about, but it should not repeat specific examples.

As always, proofread your paper and check for errors. Create a bibliography and title page according to your teacher's instructions. Consult a style guide for proper documentation.

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How to Write a Biography (Examples & Templates)

A biography is a written account of a person’s life that details their life in chronological order. Another person usually writes this detailed account, and it contains reports of their childhood, career, major life events, relationships, and social impact. It also details their relationships with their family, children, and life accomplishments.

The best way to find out more about a popular figure is through reading their biographies, so you need to make sure you get the correct information. Before writing a biography, you need to do a lot of research and interviews to represent a person’s life accurately.

Types of Biography

A biography is the story of someone’s life as written by another writer. Most biographies of popular figures are written years, or even decades, after their deaths. Authors write biographies of popular figures due to either a lack of information on the subject or personal interest.

A biography aims to share a person’s story or highlight a part of their life.

There are different types of biographies, depending on the story. Some biographies are written true to the story, while some are written as fictional works. Biographies can give you true understanding of a person on an internal as well as external level along with a lot of life lessons.

Autobiography

An autobiography is different from a biography because it is written by the subject of the story, themselves. The author writes in the first-person narrative, and it flows step-by-step like a story of their life. Autobiographies contain personal accounts of the subject’s life, along with their perspectives and opinions on events in their life.

How To Write a Biography

Pick a subject.

Picking a subject is the first step in writing a biography. You can pick an already famous person or a relatively unknown person with a great life story. If you already have a few in mind, you can start by asking yourself some questions such as;

• What has the subject accomplished that makes them a good subject?
• Have they had an impact on society?
• Is the subject a celebrity or a well-known personality?
• Will the biography appeal to a wide audience?

Get Permission

When you pick a subject, the next thing to do is to get permission from them or their family or rights owners. Although, with some historical figures, there may not be any need for permission. Getting permission from your subject makes it easier for you to get stories to put into your book. You can get the chance to obtain additional personal stories and anecdotes that will make your book more interesting by doing so as well.

Do The Research

Research is the most important part of a biography’s process as the entire content of the book is dependent on it. Irrespective of what you know about the subject, you need to carry out as much research as possible to get the story’s facts precisely.

Biography research comes from various sources, depending on the book’s subject. Firsthand reports from family, friends, or personal accounts from the subjects are primary sources. They are usually the most accurate and reliable, and they are crucial for a biography. Secondary sources come from other sources like magazines or documentaries.

Pick a Format

Biographies come in various formats, with each of them having their pros and cons. A typical biography will start at the beginning, usually with the birth and childhood of the subject. Yet, if the biography’s theme involves a different event in their life, the author may want to explore the flashback option or one with concurrent events from different times.

Usually, biographies have a theme or a general life lesson at the center. The author’s role is to tell the subject’s story leading up to the major event.

Which-ever format you choose should place the theme at the center, with the other events detailing the journey.

Create a Timeline Of The Story

Since a biography takes place in chronological order, there needs to be a timeline of the events in the right order. The timeline should contain the key events in the subject’s life, in the order the author plans on revealing them. A great way to declutter the story and keep it interesting is to use flashbacks . This way, the author can introduce past events and explain later events excluding the element of monotony.

Add In Your Thoughts

The good thing about biographies is that you don’t have to stick to the hard facts only. As the author, you can share your opinions and emotions in writing. The author has the freedom to do this by commenting on a significant action by the subject in a manner that describes why they feel the subject may have done what they did.

The author can also include commentary on events depicted in the biography – how it was influenced society or its impact on the lives around them. Recounting these events through a different perspective can make the biography more relatable and interesting to read.

FAQ’s

Why is a biography template important.

A biography template has an outline that makes the writing easier for the author. Biography templates usually contain a sample timeline, format, and questions that provide more information about the subject. With a great biography template, you can cut your writing time in half and spend less time coming up with an outline.

How are biographies better in comparison to autobiographies

Since a different person writes biographies, they tend to be more objective and somewhat accurate than autobiographies. An autobiography tells things from the author’s perspective, so their views and perspective cloud it. Thus, a biography will likely tell a more factual story.

These are the important steps you need to take to help you write a great biography. Now, to make things easier for you, we have a free customizable autobiography and biography template that you can use to start your first book. Get the template and start writing today

What are some of the most important elements to keep in consideration while writing a biography?

Any author looking to write a biography must consider the factors below. They aren’t the only important factors, but a biography isn’t complete without them. • Date and place of their birth • Academic background • Professional expertise • Death, if deceased • Facts and anecdotes about the person • Main accomplishments • Detailed accounts of their child and adult life

Biographies tell the untold stories of some incredibly relevant people in the world. But biographies are not always strictly accurate. So, every biographer needs to follow the necessary steps to provide a biography with all the requirements.

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How to Write Your Parents’ Life Story in 3 Steps

Have you ever wondered what your parents dreamed about as kids?  

Imagine you grab a book that describes the story of your life long before you were born. The words introduce you to a decade in which you didn’t yet exist, and the paragraphs move you to places where you’ve probably never been.

And you can’t put it down, because the principal characters of that breathtaking story are your parents.

As you read, you discover who they were before they met, how they grew up, and how their lives had the fortunate twist of crossing their paths. In a nonfiction book that describes your parents’ life, you can preserve those invaluable memories and connect, over and over, with your loved ones.

Writing your story and preserving your heritage not only offers benefits for your mental health , but it's also an excellent way to strengthen your relationship with your family and an admirable gesture to honor your parents.

But how do you get started?  Writing your parents’ life story from scratch is a big task, but you can make it manageable by following three simple steps.

Photo credit: Pixabay

1. Start a Five-Sense Conversation

The first step is to gather all the interesting stories of your parents’ lives. The research phase can be easy for you, but it might overwhelm your parents. Sit with them and listen carefully to their story. Enjoy that pleasant conversation — it’s not an interrogation! As they talk, hand them photo albums, old letters, or objects with sentimental value to prompt their memories.  

As you talk, focus on having a  five-sense conversation .  Your goal isn’t just to know the facts about dates and places. You also want to awaken emotions that were asleep in a hidden memory. To do that, the storytellers must work with their senses to access the best of their memories and speak from their hearts. In that way, you capture their authentic voices when it’s time to type those words on the computer.

To touch on the five senses, ask for details about what things looked like — colors, textures, shape and size. If there’s a song they love, play it, and maybe even dance or sing together. If there’s a meal your parents enjoyed as kids, try to cook that meal with them. Spend time with them and enjoy the process together, doing all you can to gather rich details about sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. 

Photo credit: Burst

Don’t be afraid to ask about everything that intrigues you. Invite your parents to talk about their dreams and downfalls, their struggles and efforts, their progress and their mistakes. Ask them which crisis made them grow, the happiest moments of their life together, and what advice they would offer to the future generations of your family — or the world.

If there are gaps in their stories, you can call on other relatives or family friends for additional information. Those supporting characters in the story can offer another perspective or a more detailed description of an anecdote.

To get more detailed information on how to prepare to interview your loved ones, check out this guideline published by the library of UCLA. 

2. Record the Interviews

It’s important to keep proof of those stories, so don’t forget to record your interviews. This will allow you to check back as you write to make sure your details are accurate. Recording will also free you from the burden of note taking so you can concentrate while they speak and enjoy a more natural conversation. In addition to preserving facts for your book, you’ll also have a treasured keepsake that captures the tone and timbre of their voice for posterity — an incredible gift for future generations.

During the interview, there are three things you should keep in mind:

• Make sure your electronic device is completely charged and has enough storage space before the conversation starts. Once the interview begins, activate the voice recorder and place it near the storytellers. It’s a good idea to do a test first, to make sure their voices are clear.
• Listen and observe your parents as they speak. Let them talk as long as they want, and try not to interrupt them — sometimes tangents turn out to be the best anecdotes! Pay attention to how their emotions bloom as they tell about a specific moment of their past.  
• Have a pad and a pen handy, but be careful not to overuse it or let it become a distraction. Write all the questions you have, and take notes of decisive citations and revealing thoughts. 

Your smartphone provides the easiest way to record your interviews.   Voice Memos  is the best recording app for iOS users — just touch the bright red button and let it record. If you have an Android device, download Easy Voice Recorder .

If you can’t meet in person, you can record your interview on your favorite video calling app. Zoom, Skype and Google Meet all offer ways to record your call. 

3. Digitize Photos and Documents

To help bring your parents’ stories to life, you’ll want to include photos in your book. Seeing your parents in their youth will complete the portrait you paint of them as full, interesting people. 

Photo credit: Getty Images

To round out the book, collect photographs, letters and documents such as birth certificates or diplomas. There are several free, downloadable apps that make scanning and editing these images easy: 

• PhotoScan  is one of the best ways to digitize old photographs for both iOS and Android users. It also allows you to back up scans with Google Photos for sharing.
• Photomyne is also free, and you can upgrade to premium features that let you scan multiple images in just one snapshot. It's free to download for both iOS and Android.
• Genius Scan and CamScanner are useful for scanning text documents. The apps automatically crop images and allow you to share them as PDF or JPG files.

Digitizing photos and documents is a great way to preserve them for posterity, and it makes it possible to insert images into your story as you write.

StoryTerrace Can Help 

Crafting a book from scratch is a thrilling project, but it can be overwhelming. If you've thought about creating that book but are having trouble getting started, StoryTerrace can help you transform that idea into a hardcover non-fiction book  with our experienced team of editors, writers and designers. 

StoryTerrace  takes on the hard work of book production so you can relax. One of our 600 writers and journalists  will interview your loved ones and turn their words into clear, compelling prose. With our specialized Bookmaker platform, you can easily add photos to the book. When all is ready to print, you’ll receive a beautiful hardback book worthy of passing down to future generations.

If you’re worried about not having the time or the skill to do your parents’ story justice, we’re here for you! StoryTerrace makes it possible to capture your parents’ stories in a professional book that you’ll be proud to share.

To learn more about our hardback books and writing process, contact StoryTerrace today .  You can also   subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out on helpful writing advice. 

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How to write an obituary for a father.

When it comes to writing obituaries, it can be hard to know where to start. Writing a beautiful obituary for your father can offer its own set of difficulties. Fathers play such important roles in their family’s lives -- how can you possibly sum all of that up in a few sentences? Here's where to start when it comes to how to write an obituary for your father.

What kind of information should you include in an obituary for a father?

Generally, you should include the following information in an obituary:

• Parents' Names
• Spouse's Name (if applicable)
• Children's Names (if applicable)

This type of information is standard to include in an obituary and helps provide a factual account of the individual’s life. Other biographical information that’s typically included is information on education, occupations, and any military service. When writing an obituary for a father, you’ll also want to focus on other aspects of his life that were particularly important to you (and your family).

What else should I say about my father in his obituary?

Include a brief overview and description of his life. The overview can be as in depth or brief as you’d like it to. The overview can be simply a statement of facts or it can be touching and descriptive. If you need to be mindful of length (which is applicable if you have to publish the obituary in a newspaper), you may want to avoid going into too much detail. You’ll always have the option to post a fuller obituary online or to share more about his life during the eulogy or memorial service.

It can help to begin by listing out details about your father’s life and what his impact was on those around him. Paying special attention to the way your father impacted others, such as your family, friends, and larger community can help you begin to put the pieces together. If your father had any lessons, values, or words he lived by, you could include these in the obituary as well.

In addition, including information about his passions, hobbies, and interests can help tell the story of your dad’s life. If your dad wasn’t a big hobbyist or you’re having difficulty coming up with favorite passions of his, here are some questions that can help guide you:

• Where were his favorite places to vacation? Why?
• Was he a part of any local community organizations or clubs? What made them special?
• Was he a part of any religious organizations? What made his religion important to him?
• Did he start or maintain any family traditions around birthdays or the holidays?
• Did he speak about his duties as a father and what he tried to impart?
• Did he have any lessons that he felt were most important to teach his children?
• Did he have any words of wisdom?
• Were there any subjects he studied or pursued throughout his life?

Here’s more information you can include that’s separate from typical biographical information:

• His interests and hobbies
• Any organizations he belonged to or volunteered for
• His sayings, words of wisdom, or values he imparted
• His relationship with his friends, family and community
• His favorite places to travel, things to make, food to eat or things to do
• Other aspects of his life that you felt made him special and unique

Important tips when writing an obituary for a father

At this point, you should have some information that you’re ready to start putting together in the form of an obituary. Here are some tips to keep in mind when you start writing an obituary for your father: Try to keep the tone in mind. Was your father funny? Serious? Lyrical? Writing an obituary that matches this style can personalize the obituary. Acknowledge his accomplishments and interests outside of fatherhood. Describe activities and hobbies he was proud of or interested in. If you have to publish the obituary in a newspaper, be mindful of length. Many newspapers charge by the line, so an obituary of just 4-5 sentences can cost you hundreds of dollars. Don’t forget to include information about any services (or if there’s no services, include that as well).

Use the AI obituary writer

Sample obituary for fathers

For an example of how to write an obituary for your (or father figure), you can reference the sample below. Most obituary examples for fathers focus on elements that made the individual a good dad. This is typically paramount to the obituary and generally includes information on how they functioned as a part of their family, as a support for their kids, and what fatherhood meant for them. This sample can be used for biological fathers, step-fathers, or even father-in-laws -- an obituary is a personal endeavour and customizing the sample obituary for your dad is important.

If you'd prefer to follow templates instead of real samples of obituaries for fathers, you can check out Ever Loved's free obituary templates for fathers and father figures. These touching obituary templates for fathers will provide you with a foundation and starting place to writing a fuller obituary that matches up with your preferences. (Regardless of what you choose to follow, writing an obituary for a dad can be made easier by checking out references, samples, and examples as it'll help you identify commonalities between examples of obituaries for a father, templates, and customized and personalized obituaries.

Jon Menken, 72, of Columbus, OH, passed away on December 1st after a brief battle with pneumonia. Jon was born on November 3rd, 1949 to Jon and Marion Menken in Minneapolis. After graduating from Eastview High in 1965, he went on to study Art History at Ohio State University. After graduation, he got his first job as a historian for the Art & History Museum in Columbus. He loved it and would end up staying with the museum for over 20 years, rising through the ranks the entire time. It was at this time that he met and fell in love with Caitlyn. They were married in 1974 and were with each other through all of life's ups and downs. Jon and Caitlyn would go on to have 2 children, Marion and Mariah. Jon was a wonderful and devoted father, husband and teacher. He always taught us to stand tall, be proud, and know ourselves in all situations and supported us all throughout the many accomplishments and difficulties of our lives. When Jon wasn't working in the archives of the museum, he could be found flyfishing and painting. An avid painter, Jon dedicated much of his time to experimenting with different styles of painting and reading about the greats. Jon was predeceased by his parents, Jon and Marion Menken. He is survived by his wife, Caitlyn; his children, Marion and Mariah; and many grandchildren. The family requests that donations be made to the Art & History Museum of Columbus, of which Jon was a member. There will be a memorial service at Greenhold Park on December 9th at 10 AM.

Here is the template, which you can edit and use as you see fit:

[Full name], [age], of [place of residence], passed away on [date of death] after [cause of death]. [First name] was born on [date and year of birth] to [parents] in [city of birth]. After graduating from [name of high school] in [high school graduation year], he went on to study [college major] at [college name]. After graduation, he got his first job as a [job title] for [company]. He loved it and would end up staying with [company] for [number] years, rising through the ranks the entire time. It was at this time that he met and fell in love with [spouse's name]. They were married in [year] and were with each other through all of life's ups and downs. [First name and spouse's first name] would go on to have [number] children, [names of children]. [First name] was a wonderful and devoted father, husband and teacher. He always taught us to [life lesson] and supported us all throughout the many accomplishments and difficulties of our lives. When [first name] wasn't working in [location], he could be found [describe hobby]. An avid [hobby name], [First name] dedicated much of his time to [description related to hobby]. [First name] was predeceased by [list of family members who have passed away]. He is survived by [list of family members who are still alive]. The family requests that donations be made to [organization name], of which [first name] was a member. There will be a [funeral service/memorial/celebration of life] at [date & time] at [location].

If you’re looking more obituary samples for dads, you can more on this list of obituary templates . These templates come with both the template and the sample obituary for fathers so that you can see what it’d look like with the template filled in. If you’d like real-world obituary samples for fathers, check out this article on examples of obituaries that have been posted to Ever Loved .

When you’re ready to post an obituary for your dad, publishing an obituary for free using Ever Loved is easy. Ever Loved obituaries come with tons of other features, such as the ability to post and collect condolences, start a fundraiser, share event information, and much more -- all for free.

Get started

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How to Write an Impactful Obituary for a Father

Gabrielle is an experienced freelance writer and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with experience using equine-assisted therapy.

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It can feel overwhelming writing an obituary for your father after he has passed away. Using some simple tips and guidelines can help you create a beautiful obituary that honors the memory of your father.

How to Write an Obituary for a Father

Whether you are writing an obituary for a newspaper or for a website, there are a few tips you can keep in mind when creating a touching obituary for your father.

• 18 Poignant Poems in Memory of Dad
• 100+ Funeral Quotes to Help Say a Final Goodbye
• 51 Father's Death Anniversary Quotes to Honor His Memory

How to Start

Describe your father's full name, date of passing, birth year or age ( may not choose to include full birthdate for security reasons), and birthplace. Always use your father's preferred gender pronouns and preferred name when writing the obituary. Doing so is respectful and validating of their identity. Discuss the details surrounding the passing briefly (if you choose to include that). For example:

"Kellan James Davis, 55, of Los Angeles, California, passed away unexpectedly on July 9th. He passed away on a solo camping trip due to a chronic medical condition."

Include Biographical Information

Include biographical information that offers a brief overview of your father's life. For example:

"Kellan graduated with honors from Pepperdine University and went on to become a marine biologist who was dedicated to protecting the oceans. In his spare time, he loved being outdoors, spending time with his family, and volunteering at the local animal shelter. Kellan wrote three books, two of which became bestsellers."

Personalize the Obituary As Space Allows

Discuss personality and traits briefly. Include a short story, meaningful poem , or favorite saying to personalize the obituary. For example:

"He was a kind and loving partner to his spouse Darryl, as well as an amazing father to their daughter Jada. Kellan's favorite saying was 'be kind', and this is exactly how he choose to live his life."

List Surviving Family Members

This information can be as detailed or as brief as desired. Most families list spouses and children, along with siblings and grandchildren. For example:

"Aside from being survived by his partner and daughter, Kellan also leaves behind his two parents, Jack and Kate Davis, as well as his dog."

Finish With Funeral and/or Donation Information

If the newspaper or obituary is printed before the services, include that information. If services were private or held previously, mention it so friends do not wonder. For example:

"The family held a private funeral last weekend and asks that any donations made in Kellan's honor go towards ocean preservation, or to a local animal shelter."

Obituary Examples for Fathers

After sharing biographical information, as well as noting the passing, you can focus on your father's impact on your life, as well as on the life of others. Keep in mind that even if you are including personal anecdotes about shared memories with your father, obituaries are typically written in third person. Short obituary examples:

From a Daughter or Son

"One of (insert deceased individual's name) biggest accomplishments was being a father. He had always wanted children and considered himself lucky enough to have two. His children, (insert children' names), called their dad a superhero, and even as adults, still see him that way. He was always there for them through their ups and downs, and taught them to enjoy every moment life has to offer."

For a Father-in-Law

"(Insert deceased individual's name) always aimed to make people feel welcome in their life, whether they were volunteering to help someone move, offering sage advice, or just being supportive to their loved ones (insert deceased individual's name) would often go above and beyond. When their daughter got married, they welcomed their son-in-law with open arms. Although they passed away before getting to meet their grandchild, the little one is named in (insert deceased individual's name) honor."

For a Step-Dad

"(Insert deceased individual's name) always wanted a big family, and when he remarried, he got his wish. His family of three grew to seven, and he absolutely loved being a father and "bonus" dad, as his step-children lovingly called him, to all of his children. As a family, their favorite activities included snowboarding, water skiing, and surfing."

For a Father Who Died Too Young

"(Insert deceased individual's name) passed away tragically in a car accident on his way to meet his partner at the hospital who was giving birth to their first child. Their daughter will be named after him to honor his kindness, confidence, strength, and amazing sense of humor."

For a Father Who Battled an Illness

"(Insert deceased individual's name) passed away due to (insert illness). Just like he dealt with all experiences in life, (insert deceased individual's name) managed his illness with strength and grace, and wanted to spend as much time with his loved ones as possible. On his final day, he was surrounded by his children, who he adored more than anything else in the world."

What to Write if Your Relationship Was Strained

If your relationship with your father was strained, focus on stating facts and details about your father's life, and know that you don't need to include personal anecdotes if you aren't comfortable doing so. Note that some surviving family members may not feel comfortable being listed in the obituary, so it's always best to check in with someone before including them. For example:

"(Insert deceased individual's name), (age), and (location), passed away on (date) due to (insert reason why if you'd like). (Insert deceased individual's name was a (insert a few adjectives) person who worked extremely hard. After graduating from (insert schooling), he went on to be a (insert career). He had a passion for (insert hobbies, passions). He is survived by (insert surviving family members' names). The funeral will take place on (insert date) at (insert location) at (insert time)."

Sample Obituary for Father

Using an obituary template can give you a great place to start if you would like some extra guidance in structuring your obituary. Download the printable image to create a customized obituary.

How Do You Write a Eulogy for Your Dad?

If you are in charge of writing the obituary for your father, you may also be tasked with writing a eulogy as well. Taking a look at sample eulogy speeches can help you format your own speech, while still leaving room for you to add your own unique touches.

How Do You Write a Meaningful Obituary?

Writing an obituary for your father can feel like a daunting task, especially if you are experiencing any symptoms of grief . Take your time, enlist the help of loved ones, and be kind to yourself during this time.

• Funerals & Memorial Services

How to Write a Biography for a Funeral Program + Examples

Updated 05/11/2022

Published 03/10/2021

Belinda McLeod, BA in Secondary Education

Contributing writer

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

After a person dies, someone in the family usually writes a biography or obituary about the person. This task sometimes falls to a friend or the funeral director may also help with the writing process. 

You may then submit the biography or obituary to the newspaper through the funeral home. Most newspapers charge families a per-word rate to print the article. You may also write the obituary for the funeral program on the funeral home’s website.

Check out our tips for writing a biography for a funeral. We will also give you short biography examples to help you with your task of telling your loved one’s life story. 

Jump ahead to these sections:

Steps for writing a biography for a funeral, funeral biography samples.

Think of a biography (or obituary) as a news article informing the general public about a death that occurred. Even though you may feel emotional when writing an obituary, this is not typically the outlet for writing about your feelings. 

Even though the biography is an informative article, it is up to you to include the details. You can include pretty much whatever you want, but it’s a good idea to get the family’s general consensus regarding what you will write about in the biography.

The number and types of details may vary, depending on the person and where the biography or obituary will be used. A biography (or obituary) read at a funeral may include more details than one printed in the newspaper or funeral program . 

Step 1: Start with the general facts

You want to identify the deceased first. Use the full name (with the maiden name in parentheses) and the age of the person. If the deceased had an often-used nickname, consider putting it in quotes. 

The more identification factors you use makes it less likely that your loved one gets mistaken for someone else. This is especially important if your loved one had a common name. 

Step 2: Consider including the essential dates in the obituary

Some families choose to include the birth date and death date of the deceased in the obituary. You can present this information in a variety of ways. 

Others avoid giving this detailed information in hopes of limiting the likelihood of fraudulent activity. You may provide partial information, such as “She was born to Bob and Mary Smith in October 1982.”

Step 3: Consider including the cause of death

The family must decide whether or not to include the cause of death. Most people who read the biography will wonder, “What happened?” This question may seem nosy to you, but it is only human nature to be curious about such matters. 

Some families choose to leave this information out of the biography, which is their prerogative. Others may view it as a piece of information that may be helpful to future generations. Some may give partial information, such as “Mary Frankie Jones, 65, passed away after a long illness.”

Step 4: Include information about the early life of the deceased

Most people choose to include the names of the parents of the deceased as well as the city of birth. Again, only include specific information if you feel comfortable; some unscrupulous individuals use this biographical information for nefarious purposes.

You may consider including where the deceased graduated high school and/or college. Include any brief military service during this section of the biography as well.

Step 5: Include other family information

Often, you list a deceased person’s marriages in the article chronologically and list children at the end of the article as “survivors to the deceased.”

For some, it’s easy to write about the deceased’s spouse but makes a difficult task for others. Again, there are no “rules” on who to include, so you and your family must make those determinations.

People agonize over whether to include estranged family members. You may also wonder whether to label stepchildren differently than biological children. Ex-spouses and long-term partners that never marry may pause you as you write the obituary. 

Each situation is different, so most etiquette guides recommend that people do their best to keep their relationships with their living family members intact by not limiting the list of survivors in the obituary. 

Step 6: Write about your loved one’s professional life

A funeral biography is not the same as a resume, but most people give at least some general information about how the deceased earned a living. 

If the deceased worked his entire adult life at one place of business, you would include this detail in the obituary. If he job-hopped but stayed in the same industry, you may include a sentence about his profession.

You may make this section of the biography longer for those with active careers. 

Step 7: Consider including information about community involvement

Many families choose to include their loved one’s involvement in community groups. For example, you may choose to include the deceased’s involvement in a specific church, civic organization, or volunteer group. You may also want to include any offices that the deceased held in any of these organizations as well as any awards earned. 

Step 8: Add any details that made your loved one special

There’s much more to life than work and club memberships. Think about other details you could include in the biography that would help people understand what made your loved one unique. 

Perhaps you want to write about how she was a Star Wars superfan and waited in line each time a new film was released. Maybe your loved one was an avid camper and fisherman and spent each weekend in a tent. 

You may want to write a lengthy exposition about what made your loved one special, which you should do. Use this information to write your loved one’s eulogy or share your writing with close family members. Depending on where you publish it, you may find your writing limited by the amount of space available. 

To get you started in your writing process, read these short, fictional obituary snippets. 

For a parent or grandparent

Douglas Richard Schrute, 82, passed away peacefully in his home on Monday, June 23, 2020. His wife of 53 years was by his side at the time of death.

Douglas was born on December 22, 1938, to Richard and Mary (Sullivan) Schrute in Elmwood, Illinois. He was the fourth son born to the couple. 

After graduating from Elmwood High School, he joined the U.S. Army, serving his country in Korea.

For a child or grandchild

Mary Kate is survived by her parents, Michael and Patricia Carmichael, and one brother, Cole. Other survivors include her maternal grandparents, John and Tawnya Crabtree, and her paternal grandparents, Frank and Louise Carmichael. 

For a partner or spouse

Peter worked in the telecommunications industry all his life. He began his career at Southwestern Bell in 1973 and retired from AT&T in 2018. He worked as a technical salesperson for most of his professional life. 

For an adult without immediate family

Michael will always be remembered by his friends as the “man of 1,000 stories.” He began each conversation by saying, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before,” which no one ever did. He was the life of the party, and laughter followed him wherever he went. 

For someone who died after a long illness

Jack passed away Friday, December 8, after a long battle with lung cancer. 

The family wishes to express appreciation to the Elmwood Hospice organization for helping make his transition to heaven as peaceful as possible.

Take Great Care When Writing the Biography of a Loved One

If you are in charge of making all of the arrangements, you may find yourself overwhelmed by your list of “to-do” items. 

Even though you may find yourself pressed for time, carefully consider the wording of your loved one’s biography or obituary. Take care to be as accurate as possible by double-checking dates, the spelling of names, and other facts. 

Anytime you write something of this level of importance, it is good to have other family members and friends check the piece for accuracy, clarity, and grammar. Have others proofread the funeral program as well and help you pick which modern funeral program to include. 

You only have one chance to write the obituary of your loved one, so take your time as you complete this task. 

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Writing About My Father

The first thing I ever wrote that I was truly proud of was a letter to my father. I wrote it to him on Father’s Day. I can’t remember how old I was, maybe 17? It’s all so nebulous, that period of my life. What I remember is how moved I was writing my thanks to him and how he responded to that letter. He came to me, tears in his eyes, letter in his hand, and gave me a big hug and thanked me.

I remember him looking at me a little incredulously that day, like he couldn’t believe what I’d written. Not the content, which I think he already knew, but the way I expressed it. Hell, it surprised even me. He let my stepmom read the letter, and she came to me with tears in her eyes. I already knew that words were powerful conduits through which we can convey meaning and emotion — I just never knew I had that ability.

I give my mom most of the credit for my love of literature, but my dad was always encouraging me and appreciating my stories. I shared an account of a near-death experience on my sailboat with him, and he raved for weeks and months and years about how much he loved my telling of that adventure. He has encouraged me from the beginning. I look up to my father — have always thought of him as a real-life superhero — and so writing became a way to make him proud.

My dad was my best friend for most of my childhood. I knew this early on and celebrated it and bragged about it. How many other kids considered their father their best friend? I didn’t know many. But I would get up at the crack of dawn during the summer months to go farming with him. I would sit on his lap and steer his pickup truck. I would dip into his tobacco when he wasn’t looking. I would lean out the truck window and throw up soon after. I slept on the floor of the bathroom while he showered, back when I was five or six years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. He would hold his jeans by the waist, jump up in the air, and shove both feet through at the same time, all before he hit the ground. My dad could fly.

I fell in love with my wife Amber while talking about my dad. We were at dinner. Amber and I had just met that morning, had spent the day together out on a boat I was captaining at the time. The couple that owned the boat were sitting with us on the patio of this restaurant, and Amber was doing her psychologist trick of asking pointed questions and forcing us to answer them in turn. She asked who our hero was, and when it was my turn to respond, I started talking about my father. I got choked up. Amber reached under the table and squeezed my hand. She told me about her father. We fell in love.

It’s weird to be so close to my dad, to consider him my best friend even today, and realize that most of my books are about losing a father. My parents got divorced when I was eight or nine years old. My dad moved into a house down the street, and so began a life lived between two homes. A life of every-other-weekends. Often it was every weekend. We spent a lot of time together. It wasn’t like he was off on another planet, but you would never know that looking over my body of work.

The first book I ever wrote was about a girl named Molly who lost her dad. She spends four entire novels trying to find him, to be reunited with him. Juliette’s strained and distant relationship with her father is a central theme in Wool. The final scene of that book was written fairly early in the process — I think while writing part 2 of Wool. All of that plot and adventure culminates in what she decides to do on the final page. And then there’s Sand, where a father’s disappearance tears a family apart, where his absence looms larger than the night sky.

I don’t think any of this is an accident. I love my dad. I missed him. I think I spend a lot of time writing about how much I missed him. We didn’t have to be dysfunctional for that to motivate my art. We just were who we were.

One of my fondest childhood memories I have of my dad was during this freak snowstorm in Monroe, North Carolina. My dad knew people wouldn’t drive carefully enough with the roads covered in snow. So he threw a chain into the back of his pickup, grabbed two pairs of work gloves, bundled me up, and off we went, driving aimlessly around town. Sure enough, we came across cars in ditches, the owners stranded. This was before cell phones. Way before. Dad would pull up and tell these people that he’d have them out “in a jiffy.”

He’d let me out, and the two of us would spin the locks on the front tires to put the truck in four-wheel-drive. I was so proud that I knew how to do this. I was probably ten or twelve years old. I’d tug on those too-big gloves and wave him back as he put the truck in reverse and eased down into the ditch to line up with the front of the stricken car. He’d hand me the chain, and I’d dive down under the bumper, looking for something solid to wrap it around. I felt like a real man under there, with the grease and the mud, studying the hidden bits of machinery that make cars move. Dad would inch forward until the chain was tight; the truck would lurch and growl; but we always got the vehicles back on the road. My dad could do anything.

But it was what he did next that taught me my biggest lesson — it’s the thing that makes me strive to be like him every single day. The owners of these cars would fish a few bills out of their wallets, sometimes every bit of what they had in there, and try to pay my dad. And he always refused. Waved them off. Threw that chain back in the bed of the truck with a clack and rattle, knocked the snow off my jacket, told me to get back in and to mind the mud on my boots, and then we were off again, looking for someone else in trouble, not a care of our own between us.

I don’t thank my father enough for inspiring me to be a better person. I write about him in all of my books. Always missing. Always distant. But that wasn’t how he lived. He was always there and still is. I guess even with all that time together, it was never enough. And that’s what I write about.

37 responses to “Writing About My Father”

Beautifully expressed.

Thank you for sharing so much of yourself, Hugh. In so many ways.

A wonderful account, thank you.

As a father to two girls, the younger being a senior in high school this year, I often reminisce about the concerts, the sporting events, and the little gifts and hugs they have given me over the years. I remember how my chest swelled with pride to bursting on seeing their accomplishments. And how my eyes teared up with joy at knowing these were my children.

Though my family was together for my childhood, I didn’t have a good relationship with my dad. We were too much alike in the wrong ways I think and we butted heads often in my teen years. I lost him in an accident at home just after I graduated high school at seventeen. I wonder sometimes if time would have healed our relationship — if he felt about me the way I’ve felt about my daughters.

Tell your kids you love them, and that you’re proud of them. Every day.

Great account of your father. I like how the story of the chains in the snow made into the hurricane.

Youve become an inspiration yourself. Keep writing. We want whatever’s next.

Mike http://www.cindercast.com

I’m so glad that your dad cried that day after reading your letter, and you saw the impact that your words had on people.

Hugh Howey, you made me cry.

Not the tearing up, sniffing, thinking “OMG that’s beautiful” (although it is) kind of cry. But the “son-of-a-bitch I’m sitting here blatting” kind of cry.

The fact that you can be so open, can express your feelings, love, and admiration so openly-THIS is what makes you able to create characters who readers fall in love with; and even love to hate. You are able to dream up great stories with your mind and your intellect shapes eloquent sentences that move people. But your heart is what allows you to connect. Thanks for that.

I too adored my father and unfortunately he died way, way too young. Almost half a lifetime ago. It still feels like yesterday. I’m not sharing that for sympathy or anything; just to say thanks for making me think of my dad. I hope your family blesses you for many years to come.

Hugh, this is very moving and wonderfully expressed. I was sitting in the cafe with tears in my eyes reading it. It struck me as a son, but also as a teacher. In China teachers become somewhat parental figures, even for university students, which gives a teacher a lot of power in a kid’s life. That’s why when I appreciate a student’s work, I always show it with my whole being to encourage them the way your father did.

Also, this instantly inspired me to want to write about my own father, but there are so many complications to trying to get a bead on a man, as it should be. So, I quickly wrote this to express my complicated feelings, and hopefully this will be a jumping off point for a future piece about him. Thank you.

—————————- Insect by WuWei Wilson

My father was a killer at one time in his life. He killed the grandfathers of people who I would later go on to love, to teach, to share my deepest feelings with. Somehow his path of pointing a gun, led to my path of pointing a word of friendship. But the blood on my father’s hands stained his whole life.

My father was a lover. He had love in his heart and tried to share it as best he could with everyone he met. Especially those weaker and more vulnerable to life’s crushing thumb. He taught me to love and be open to the grandchildren of the the people he once killed.

My father was fighter who thought most problems could be solved by force of muscle, voice or will. He would punish the bad in his eyes. He would use fist to fight his foe. Belt to punish his brood. He would see himself as righteous anger in the name of good.

My father was a philosopher. He knew that he could not change others in any large way, and you could fight and argue but in the end you just needed to do right by them and by you. Be good, spread that good. See evil, but don’t let it make you evil. Acknowledge there is very little distinction between the two.

Skin of stone. Heart of glass.

Blood on face. Tears in eyes.

A shout in mouth. A sigh in throat.

Hands in fists. Arms giving hug.

My father is still alive. He is still all these things in some small way, but now he is mostly just tired. Although I can still see the man there, the man that has been made by contradictions. The way life is made by dualities.

A honest man will always be an insect. Wallowing in shit one moment, enjoying the view from the top of a flower the next. My father was, is, always will be an insect. As am I.

Hugh, this piece in itself is inspiring. Your dad sounds like a great guy. Thanks for sharing a little bit of him with us.

Very nice, Hugh, thanks for sharing this. Having met & chatted to you, albeit briefly, I can tell your father would be delighted at how his boy turned out, and how you are not only writing great books but in the vanguard of a publishing revolution. Sharing your publishing experiences will act act like snow-chains and will help draw-out writers who are being sucked in to the quicksand of the “traditional” ways.

You made me cry. Lately, I feel like I don’t have the words I need. I feel like I should be saying all kinds of important things to my dad, but just thinking about it makes me cry. I try to show him, through my actions, how important he is to me, because my words are gone.

Absolutely wonderful story and a beautiful tribute, not only your family and Amber, but to “love.” Continued success and good health to you in 2014, Hugh. Jerry :)

I am a mom of two children, one of which is graduating high school in June. I have to say your story is inspirational in a way that you probably did not even consider. As a mom or dad there is also never enough time with our children either. I stayed at home mom when my children were little and I have always worked a job that enabled me to be home when they were home. There are days when it takes my breath away to look at a picture of them from when they were little because it seems like the picture was taken days ago instead of years. I have often wondered what it felt like to look at old pictures for parents who did not spend much time with their kids. I can’t decide if I think it would be easier or harder.

Beautiful piece. Both my parents are gone and I have friends with parents still living who often don’t want to spend time with them. It hurts me to hear it. It brings all types of tears to my eyes — tears about missing my parents and the fun we had, tears for my friends who don’t realize that precious time is slipping away and you can’t get it back, tears for their parents who surely miss them.

This touched my heart. I know your mom and dad. I used to hang out at your grandparents house, Hugh and Cutie’s, while I was in high school. I had a crush on your mom, but she was a few years older than me. I always thought Hamp was a lucky man. Later on, I even bought the land that I live on from him, on Wesley Chapel Road. You dad is a great guy! Just hate that he has moved from here. It is so refreshing to read what you have written here about him. So proud that you are doing great as writer. Keep it you. You make Union County proud!!!

Thank you for going into the ditch for us, Hugh. Just… thank you.

Beautiful. You made me cry-but in a good way. Thank you for sharing that with us, Hugh. Your love for your father does bleed through into your work, and it is a wonderful thing.

This is wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Hugh, he is still that way 100%. You are both blessed.

Thank you for this gem, Hugh. You’ve crafted a perfect synopsis of who you are and how you came to be, probably not your goal, but there it is :)

That was very moving, Hugh. Like others, I cried when I read it. I wish I’d known my father the way you knew yours. My father died when I was 5, and at my age (67) I still miss him, even though I hardly knew him.

Your father sounded like a great man. :D

I remember getting out to turn those things on the front wheels just like that on my dad’s truck!! But never for the reason you describe. What incredible memories and what a truly good man. I suspect your apple didn’t fall far.

” I guess even with all that time together, it was never enough. ” that says it all about my dad. I am almost the age he was when he died. Fify-nine, way too young and so much has happened since then. Thanks for writing about your dad and reminding me how much I love mine

My husband and I have know Hamp, Hugh’s father, for a life time as we have know and loved Hugh for his lifetime! We love both his parents, but this essay about Hamp and his wife Sherry are so accurate! Hugh is a blending of this loving parents, but these times and experience with Hamp are profound! We share many good memories and life stories with Hugh and Hamp. Both are amazing men who are the salt of the earth and are grounded in all the right values for living the good and honest life. We are so proud of you, Hugh! Walt and Cookie

What a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. Hamp is everything you described and truly a loyal friend and neighbor! We are blessed to have both your dad and step-mom and our lives. Thank you for sharing.

You, my dear, are a mensch. I’m proud to know you.

Absolutely beautiful, Hugh! Made me quite teary. Your dad sounds like a wonderful man! And I’m sure he’s very proud of you! :)

Hey Hugh. Thanks for sharing. That touches my heart, both as a new father imagining how important I can be to my son and as someone who can relate. My dad was and still is very important to me. I grew up with my mom while he was in another state getting his medical residency finished, but when we moved back in with him, he was working like 80 hours a week. I cherished everything we could do together and enjoy together, from music to sports. He made up a cowboy character and told us bedtime stories about him. I’m sure that influenced my love of stories. I remember his excitement when I was old enough to read and get The Cather in the Rye, and how he took me to the bookstore to get it, telling me about how it was a banned book and me feeling a rush of discovery to have his permission and encouragement to read something that the system said was bad.

They got divorced when I was twelve and it was really hard. I moved in with him and when he soon after lost his job, we had my teenage years to finally bond, working together at a pizza place and having more time to chat and hang out. His self-admitted failures frustrated and saddened me at the time, and pushed me to not make the same mistakes–for both of us. A big part of who I am is influenced by seeing those and trying to do better, even though I have all the tendencies that he had which overpowered his good intentions and caused problems. This journey of leap frogging our parents may be common, but it is still fascinating and emotional. We love them for their efforts and they love us for the same. We (hopefully) forgive them for where they messed up and see in them the same idiosyncricies which could lead to the same results for us if we’re not careful. Likewise, they see in us those traits and lovingly try and coach us to be better than they were.

I’d comment about that and what you’ve written in Sand, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I told you how much I loved the sunrise scene. I love both parents in that book and the way the family unit is explored emotionally. Same as in the Silo Saga. I appreciate you sharing because of how much depth it adds to the reading experience, knowing you better as the storyteller.

Have a beautiful day, Hugh. Thanks again for telling us your stories.

Warms my heart to read about such a loving father and generous human being – enjoyed it!

My grandfather was T.M. Howey. He was from mineral springs area. But left to work for the railroad. His home was in Richmond. Anyway, I think we could be related. My Mother was adopted but her real mother was a Sutton, also from that area of Union County. So I am curious if you are a cousin… Polly

[…] Writing About My Father | Hugh Howey […]

Very nice :-) Our life is in our books. There is always a predominant theme, irrespective of how we weave the plot. Thanks for sharing

[…] week, Hugh Howey wrote a blog piece about themes in his writing and it got me thinking about my own. I have enough of […]

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Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

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A short biography of my father

As I've already mentioned online somewhere, my father died in late November. His memorial service will be held in February, at the church he attended. I wrote up a short biography for the pastors at the church to refer to in their eulogy (or whatever it is called that is read out at a memorial service) and I thought I'd post it here too, as a sort of closure. It is admittedly the 'good' version of my father's life, and leaves out a lot, but it is what I think is most fitting.

Masamichi Itoh was born in 1936 in Tokyo. His parents were Salvation Army officers working at a Salvation Army hospital. They were Christians, which was very unusual for Japanese people at that time. While he was evacuated to the countryside during the war, he spent most of his youth in Tokyo. Years later he remembered always being hungry as a child, especially in the postwar period, and his mother struggling to feed six children. He was the oldest.

From an early age he was very interested in America and learning English. In his teens he had more than 25 penpals in America, all but one of whom were girls, most of them blonde. His favorite American actress was June Allyson. When he entered college in the '50s, he grew his hair into a "regent" - a big fluffy pompadour at front, like James Dean - and frequented the dance halls of Tokyo, dancing the boogie woogie.

At the age of 26 he married Michiko Munemura, a 21 year old girl with big eyes. It was an arranged marriage, the usual way young people got married in Japan at the time. They eventually had three daughters - Makiko, Mayumi and Megumi. Makiko lives in France, Mayumi in Japan, and Megumi in Florida. He also has two grandchildren, Lyoh and Lena.

His English ability and his interest in travelling abroad finally came together in his early 30s, when he was sent to England by his company to cultivate business there. He was their sole representative in Europe for 5 years. After six months he was joined by his wife and two older daughters (daughter no. 3 was born later in the United States). Life was tough sometimes, but looking back later he said he really enjoyed his time in England.

After several years in England and a year in New York, he and his family returned to Tokyo. But back in Japan, he did not feel like he fit into his company anymore. Unhappy, he took the drastic step of resigning - a very unusual thing to do for a Japanese salaryman in the 1970s. He found another job back in New York and the family moved once more.

Perhaps because of so many moves, the marriage became too strained, and he divorced from his wife a few years later. He eventually found friendship and a purpose in life again when he joined the Universal Church, which became the center of his spiritual and social life. He found it very fulfilling to serve on the church's board, especially after retirement. That and his friends here [in New York] were the main reasons why he decided to live out his retirement in New York rather than going back to Japan.

Masamichi had a lifelong love of good food, movies, and travel. He used to keep file folders full of the business cards of restaurants he visited around the world. When he was in his 60s, he went back to dance class again to boogie woogie once more.

(See also: Doing business as a Japanese businessman in the '60s and '70s' )

Comments on this post:

Thank you for sharing.

Did you parents decide to keep the M name going or is that something that Japanese families do traditionally? We almost did that with our son. But I decided I didn't want tradition and his name is so strange to most people anyway that I just like it. Even though it's a really old English name. Your Father really lived a vibrant life, or at least it sounds that way! Thank you so much for sharing!

The M thing is just a

The M thing is just a coincidence, definitely not any kind of tradition. Though when it came time to name my youngest sister my parents may have looked for an M-name on purpose.

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Jules Verne

(1828-1905)

Who Was Jules Verne?

Jules Verne hit his stride as a writer after meeting publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who nurtured many of the works that would comprise the author's Voyages Extraordinaires. Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction," Verne wrote books about a variety of innovations and technological advancements years before they were practical realities. Although he died in 1905, his works continued to be published well after his death, and he became the second most translated author in the world.

Early Years and Career

Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France, a busy maritime port city. There, Verne was exposed to vessels departing and arriving, sparking his imagination for travel and adventure. While attending boarding school, he began to write short stories and poetry. Afterward, his father, a lawyer, sent his oldest son to Paris to study law.

Verne continued to write despite pressure from his father to resume his law career, and the tension came to a head in 1852, when Verne refused his father's offer to open a law practice in Nantes. The aspiring writer instead took a meager-paying job as secretary of the Théâtre-Lyrique, giving him the platform to produce Blind Man's Bluff ( Le Colin‑maillard ) and The Companions of the Marjolaine ( Les Compagnons de la Marjolaine ).

In 1856, Verne met and fell in love with Honorine de Viane, a young widow with two daughters. They married in 1857, and, realizing he needed a stronger financial foundation, Verne began working as a stockbroker. However, he refused to abandon his writing career, and that year he also published his first book, The 1857 Salon ( Le Salon de 1857 ) .

Marriage and Child

In 1859, Verne and his wife embarked on the first of approximately 20 trips to the British Isles. The journey made a strong impression on Verne, inspiring him to pen Backwards to Britain ( Voyage en Angleterre et en Écosse ), although the novel wouldn't be published until well after his death. In 1861, the couple's only child, Michel Jean Pierre Verne, was born.

Meeting Pierre-Jules Hetzel

Verne's literary career had failed to gain traction to that point, but his luck would change with his introduction to editor and publisher Hetzel in 1862. Verne was working on a novel that imbued a heavy dose of scientific research into an adventure narrative, and in Hetzel he found a champion for his developing style. In 1863, Hertzel published Five Weeks in a Balloon ( Cinq semaines en ballon) , the first of a series of adventure novels by Verne that would comprise his Voyages Extraordinaires . Verne subsequently signed a contract in which he would submit new works every year to the publisher, most of which would be serialized in Hetzel's Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation.

Literary Career

In 1864, Hetzel published The Adventures of Captain Hatteras ( Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras) and Journey to the Center of the Earth ( Voyage au centre de la Terre) . That same year, Paris in the Twentieth Century ( Paris au XXe siècle) was rejected for publication, but in 1865 Verne was back in print with From the Earth to the Moon ( De la Terre à la Lune) and In Search of the Castaways ( Les Enfants du capitaine Grant).

Inspired by his love of travel and adventure, Verne soon bought a ship, and he and his wife spent a good deal of time sailing the seas. Verne's own adventures sailing to various ports, from the British Isles to the Mediterranean, provided plentiful fodder for his short stories and novels. In 1867, Hetzel published Verne's Illustrated Geography of France and Her Colonies ( Géographie illustrée de la France et de ses colonies ), and that year Verne also traveled with his brother to the United States. He only stayed a week — managing a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, then on to Niagara Falls — but his visit to America made a lasting impact and was reflected in later works.

In 1869 and 1870, Hetzel published Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea ( Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) , Ar ound the Moon ( Autour de la Lune) and Discovery of the Earth ( Découverte de la Terre). By this point, Verne's works were being translated into English, and he could comfortably live on his writing.

Beginning in late 1872, the serialized version of Verne's famed Around the World in Eighty Days ( Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours ) first appeared in print. The story of Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout takes readers on an adventurous global tour at a time when travel was becoming easier and alluring. In the century plus since its original debut, the work has been adapted for the theater, radio, television and film, including the classic 1956 version starring David Niven.

Verne remained prolific throughout the decade, penning The Mysterious Island ( L’Île mystérieuse ), The Survivors of the Chancellor ( Le Chancellor ), Michael Strogoff ( Michel Strogoff ), and Dick Sand: A Captain at Fifteen ( Un Capitaine de quinze ans ), among other works.

Later Years, Death and Posthumous Works

Although he was enjoying immense professional success by the 1870s, Verne began experiencing more strife in his personal life. He sent his rebellious son to a reformatory in 1876, and a few years later Michel caused more trouble through his relations with a minor. In 1886, Verne was shot in the leg by his nephew Gaston, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. His longtime publisher and collaborator Hetzel died a week later, and the following year his mother passed away as well.

Verne did, however, continue to travel and write, churning out Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon ( La Jangada ) and Robur the Conqueror ( Robur-le-conquérant ) during this period. His writing soon became noted for a darker tone, with books like The Purchase of the North Pole ( Sans dessus dessous ), Propeller Island ( L’Île à hélice ) and Master of the World (Maître du monde) warning of dangers wrought by technology.

Having established his residence in the northern French city of Amiens, Verne began serving on its city council in 1888. Stricken with diabetes, he died at home on March 24, 1905.

However, his literary output didn't end there, as Michel assumed control of his father's uncompleted manuscripts. Over the following decade, The Lighthouse at the End of the World ( Le Phare du bout du monde), The Golden Volcano ( Le Volcan d’or) and The Chase of the Golden Meteor ( La Chasse au météore) were all published following extensive revisions by Michel.

Additional works surfaced decades later. Backwards to Britain finally was printed in 1989, 130 years after it was written, and Paris in the Twentieth Century , originally considered too far-fetched with its depictions of skyscrapers, gas-fueled cars and mass transit systems, followed in 1994.

In all, Verne authored more than 60 books (most notably the 54 novels comprising the Voyages Extraordinaires ), as well as dozens of plays, short stories and librettos. He conjured hundreds of memorable characters and imagined countless innovations years before their time, including the submarine, space travel, terrestrial flight and deep-sea exploration.

His works of imagination, and the innovations and inventions contained within, have appeared in countless forms, from motion pictures to the stage, to television. Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction," Verne is the second most translated writer of all time (behind Agatha Christie ), and his musings on scientific endeavors have sparked the imaginations of writers, scientists and inventors for over a century.

Watch "The Extraordinary Journeys of Jules Verne" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Verne
• Birth Year: 1828
• Birth date: February 8, 1828
• Birth City: Nantes
• Birth Country: France
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Jules Verne, a 19th-century French author, is famed for such revolutionary science-fiction novels as 'Around the World in Eighty Days' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 1905
• Death date: March 24, 1905
• Death City: Amiens
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Jules Verne Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/jules-verne
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 10, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
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