Udating side of READ theme with profile pic + description

Hi team,

I have a quick question. On the Read theme, there is a sidebar on the home page with recent published articles with their respective categories above them.

I feel this is redundant as I am often seeing two of the same articles on the homepage. For example, if I publish something, it will appear both on the Home Page Latest Articles section as well as the Sidebar Latest Posts section, meaning that the same article will show twice on the home page.

I have a couple of questions: #1 Is there anyway to avoid this? #2 Instead of a Sidebar Latest Posts section, I am thinking of adding a photo of myself and my bio which is often found on blogs (An Authorbox).

Please let me know your thoughts, and how I would go about accomplish #2 if there is no workaround

I've attached a photo of the empty section where I would like to add an author box and my url