The creation of novelized biographies about poets and writers is a trend in world literature. Winner of the Alash International Literary Prize and the Lermontov Prize, poet, prose writer V. Mikhailov is the author of essay novels about M. Lermontov, E. Boratynsky and N. Zabolotsky, which were published on the pages of the oldest literary and artistic magazine «Prostor». All three books were published in Moscow in the series “Life of Remarkable People” (ZhZL) and were highly appreciated by literary criticism. This article is devoted to how the author moved from essays and sketches about individual poets - P. Vasiliev, P. Kuznetsov to essay novels about famous poets of the 19th and 20th centuries. We, following V. Mikhailov, are approaching the solution to the mystery of a creative personality and are convinced that autobiography, biography and creativity are inseparable.