She's obsessed, she's geeky, she's a dedicated dilettante.
Elizabeth Lunday is a journalist and author devoted to stories about the sillier side of serious culture. As well as writing Secret Lives of Great Artists, she's a regular contributor to the "Masterpieces" column of mental_floss, where she tells the stories behind the world's masterpieces of art, literature and music. She also contributes the "Can You Feel Lit?" feature to the mentalfloss.com blog and maintains her own blog, The Dilettante.

But how do you develop such an odd specialty?
Frankly, it's a mystery. One thing lead to another.

Lunday graduated from Texas Christian University with degrees in Journalism and English (and a grand total of zero art history classes) and entered the world of corporate marketing. For seven years, she reserved her geekier cultural interests for the weekend and spent her days writing press releases and proposals for engineering and high tech companies in Austin, Texas.

In 2000, two big events occurred: Lunday moved to Chapel Hill, NC to get a master's degree in literature and she bought an electric blue VW Beetle named Katrina. (Unfortunate, isn't it? Who could have guessed her namesake would destroy New Orleans.) Three years, a master's degree and a baby later, Lunday returned to her hometown of Fort Worth, a city with the combined advantages of excellent Mexican food and free babysitting courtesy extended family. She took up freelancing, cranking out articles on topics from heart health to wastewater management. It's fair to say that when you've written about wastewater management, you can write about anything.

Today, Lunday lives in her Arts and Crafts bungalow with her husband Chris, a professor of chemistry at North Lake College, her son Nathan, and two cats. Katrina the Beetle lives in the driveway.