Idea Fountain creator Lorette C. Luzajic‘s new book Fascinating Writers: twenty-five unusual lives dives into the lives of famed authors, via brief narratives which showcase Luzajic’s trademark irreverence, through her insightful and totally subjective experiences. Not only will you be brought on a enchanting journey to meet Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway, and Leo Tolstoy, among many others — 10% of proceeds from this book benefits charity that advocates for freedom of speech, the most fundamental of human rights and the foundation of all others.

Here Lorette talks about why she chose these 25 people specifically, which author she admires most and her plan to write 1000 essays on fascinating people:

Why did you choose these 25 specifically?

I choose my fascinating writers the same way I choose any of the interesting figures for my Fascinating People project – with a combination of sparked inspiration and random selection. (Some of these essays were first published at Book Slut). The Fascinating People project was born out of the lifelong joy and inspiration and curiosity that I get from various interesting personalities. My original goal was to create one thousand essay length biographies over the years that would give me the chance to get to know more interesting people and share them with others. No one has the time to read full-length biographies of every interesting personage. But I didn’t want simple Wikipedia entry style fact-sheets- I wanted to immerse myself in the life and work of the person and share my own wholly subjective experience. The hope is that ultimately my audience will be intrigued by some and go on to delve further on their own. While I write about all kinds of people, this collection showcases only writers. And I went out of my way to be as diverse as possible. Hence, we have the writers considered the greatest novelists of all time, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But we also have popular romance writer Danielle Steel. We have kids’ book writer Dr. Seuss; we also have poets Lord Byron and Vachel Lindsay, who couldn’t differ more one from another.  There’s Arthur Miller and there’s Haruki Murakami. I want readers to see their favourites but also to learn about writers they may never have read. I also wanted to push myself outside my usual genres.

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