
THE ENIGMATIC NOVEL, SET BETWEEN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW, WRITTEN BY EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM FRIEDREICH’S ATAXIA
Writers with this disease unite their talents and energies to compose a single, collaborative story.
Press release - For immediate release
May 9, 2011 – Writers suffering from a terrible disease are coming together to author a special, collaborative novel that will be sold in bookstores to collect funds for scientific research. This original literary project with a multiplicity of voices will be published to fight Friedreich’s Ataxia, a neurodegenerative disease that relentlessly affects many people worldwide and still has no cure. It is, however, a “niche” disease in which pharmaceutical companies do not invest. Resources to fund research on this disease are therefore collected from people who are either directly or indirectly affected by it and who work on a voluntary basis. This ambitious initiative was started by María Blasco, a 38 year old Spanish author suffering from Friedreich’s Ataxia since childhood. Some of the other writers from around the world who have joined the project are Fatima D’Oliveira (Portugal), Marguerite Black (South Africa), Rebecca Stant (Australia), Jamie Leigh Hansen (United States), Alessia Mainardi (Italy), Maria Pino Brumberg (Spain), Nicola Batty (UK), Claudia Parada (Mexico), just to name a few.