Featured Interview With Erik Seversen
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was a bit of an awkward kid growing up, but I had huge dreams. Born into a middle-class family in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington, everything about me was average, but I simply decided not to live an average life.
Chasing my dreams has led me to over 80 countries around the world and 49 of the states in the USA, it has allowed me to graduate from UCLA undergraduate and the University of Virginia for grad school, to hitchhike from London to Zaire, and live with a remote Indian tribe in the Amazon. Chasing dreams continues to allow me to push limits by climbing mountains having summited the highest peaks in nine countries and eight states.
I now live in Los Angeles with my wife, two kids, a snake named Buddy, and a few fish.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was a late bloomer when it comes to reading, and I really didn’t read as kid, but when I hit my junior year in high school, something clicked. I fell in love with academics and reading. Having to make up for a lot of lost time, I was reading sometimes two books a day, and the love of reading has not left.
It was also during my late teenage years that I began to write. I started documenting fascinating experiences in short stories, and a few of those same stories are now included in my current book of narratives called Ordinary to Extraordinary.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
The first author that really struck me was Edgar Allan Poe, and he greatly influenced my early creative writing. A bit later, Jean-Paul Sartre and the French existentialists influenced both my thoughts and writing. Currently, my favorite authors include out-of-the box thinkers like Tim Ferriss, and I mostly read biographies and entrepreneurial success, but I still love good stories particularly about adventure in the mountains.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Ordinary to Extraordinary is my first completed book. It is about adventure, chance meetings, and unexpected results. It is also about love, struggle, and finding meaning through meeting amazing people and being alone with my thoughts. It is also about continuing to chase dreams, even impractical ones.
I began writing short stories from my life as early as sixteen years old, but finally when I had collected a number of them, I realized that it needed more, so I spent the last three years reorganizing the book and in weaving a larger narrative related to how belonging and purpose are pillars of a fulfilled life.
Ordinary to Extraordinary is a book of true first-person narratives about my life, but as much as the book is a memory of my multitude of adventures, it is reader-focused, attempting to show in reflective chapters how extraordinary is available to all of us. We just need to open the door to it.
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