Eric Burns American critic, writer, poet, journalist and game designer Date of Birth: 27.01.1968 Country: USA

Biography of Eric Burns

Eric Burns was an American critic, writer, poet, journalist, and game designer. He was born and raised in Fort Kent, Maine. After two years of high school, he enrolled in Boston University College and later moved to Ithaca, New York, where he worked as a professional actor and part-time at Manpower Inc. He then returned to school and attended the University of Maine in Fort Kent, where he graduated with honors and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.

With a background in literary criticism, Burns began writing about comics. During this time, he also started publishing his poetry, mainly in the publication "Black Fly Review". His first stories were published in the magazine "Mythic Heroes". After completing his studies, Burns briefly returned to Ithaca and worked as an actor at the Sterling Renaissance Festival. He then moved to Seattle, Washington, before eventually settling in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

During this time, Burns was involved in the development of the role-playing game "In Nomine" and wrote for the magazine "Pyramid". He also became one of the developers of the game "Sidewinder Wild West Adventures", which was nominated for an ENnie award. Burns also contributed to the creation of "Sidewinder: Recoiled" and the game "Decipher".

In 1999, Burns started working on an online magazine and diary called "Some Days in the life of Eric Alfred Burns", which, although similar to a modern-day blog, mainly contained essays and reflections by Eric. The resource was not as popular as the later-created Websnark, but still attracted around three thousand readers daily who followed the author's description of his struggle with heart failure and the events after a car accident he was involved in 2000.

Continuing his involvement in games and maintaining a LiveJournal blog, which was more suited for a traditional diary format than essays, Eric launched Websnark in 2004. Initially conceived as a lighthearted journal, an extension of "Some Days in the Life," Eric attracted a daily audience of tens of thousands by filling it with serious essays. Using a conversational style and focusing on comics, Burns made his resource a competitor to critical publications such as Comixpedia and The Webcomic Examiner. Despite often comparing critics to snarks (a fictional creature from Lewis Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark"), Burns avoids a sarcastic tone in his publications, preferring to focus on positive news from the world of webcomics. Websnark also publishes reflections on philosophy and popular culture, but the site is primarily known for its articles on comics. Burns avoids traditional criticism when writing about comics, claiming that he himself lacks the talent for drawing (this is confirmed by his first webcomic, "Unfettered by Talent," which he drew himself).

Burns engages in new criticism, mythology, history, and has an avid interest in literary theory. He calls himself a supporter of the "new criticism" movement, although he never thoroughly studies the works he critiques. As an advocate of Wikipedia as a means of centralizing information, Burns once proposed the idea of creating a resource about comics called Webcomics Wiki.