Staff

Sarah Mackey, Community Liaison

Shortly after discovering NaNoWriMo in 2002, Sarah received a BA in English from the University of Alberta. This led to many years happily working in public libraries and volunteering as a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison in Edmonton. After a trip to the Night of Writing Dangerously in 2008, increasing involvement in OLL projects led to a decision to go back to school. In 2010, after an internship at OLL HQ, she completed her diploma in Public Relations and began doing contract work for OLL. After ten years as a participant, ML, intern, and contractor, Sarah is thrilled to become a full-fledged full-time employee. When not educating her coworkers about the many delights of Canada, Sarah enjoys knitting, napping, and the lesser-appreciated punctuation marks.

Chris Angotti, Young Writers Program Director

Chris Angotti received an M.A. in English education from Teachers College at Columbia University, and spent three years teaching middle and high school students in New York City. “Too busy” to write during this time, he put off project after project. After relocating to the Bay Area, Chris decided to enter the world of education nonprofits, and was lucky enough to find a job at OLL that relates to teaching and forces him to write… like, a lot. When he’s not working at OLL or sweating to create vaguely readable prose, Chris enjoys hanging out in Berkeley, drinking coffee, watching movies, and buying too many records. He also finds burritos, ice cream, and dogs to be particularly awesome.

Grant Faulkner, Office of Letters and Light Executive Director

As a boy, Grant spent his allowance on all sorts of pens and paper, so there was never much question that he would become a writer. He received his B.A. from Grinnell College in English and his M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He has published in such journals as The Southwest Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Gargoyle, and The Berkeley Fiction Review, among others. He’s the founder and editor of the lit journal 100 Word Story and writes essays and book reviews for a number of publications and blogs. He believes quite simply that everyone is a writer—that we create our world through the stories we tell—so he now enthusiastically prods nearly everyone he meets to write a novel or a script and feel how life can be transformed through a daring creative act.

Tavia Stewart-Streit, Deputy Director

In 2003, Tavia graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Creative Writing. Shortly after college, having had enough of the traffic in Los Angeles, she packed up and moved to San Francisco in search of a new life in the Bay Area’s literary scene. For the first couple years, she waited tables, volunteered at 826 Valencia’s creative writing center, and interned for McSweeney’s Publishing andZYZZYVA, a local literary magazine. Never in a million years did she imagine that all her hard work would one day pay off and land her such an amazing job at such an inspiring organization. But it did, and here she is!

Tim Kim, Managing Editor

The ballad of Tim Kim begins by noting that his name rhymes and is, thus, extremely ballad-suited. Tim studied literature at UCSD, then eventually returned to the Bay Area to intern at the Office of Letters and Light. All that close proximity with the OLL staff rock stars launched Tim into positions with San Francisco magazine, WIRED magazine, and Condé Nast. Then lo, did he hear the call of OLL once again, and jumpeth at the chance to return to that creative Eden. (That was an attempt at making this more ballad-like…total success!). On the side, Tim makes time with Once magazine.

Dan Duvall, Technical Director

Suburban-born, Dan was raised on video games, Slurpees, the best-of-the-worst action flicks, and juvenile mischief. It’s taken nearly a decade for him to “get out of the house” and the shock of it all has him entertaining delusions of subsistence farming and off-the-grid living from time to time. His notable strengths include sandwich composition, scat singing, spinning pile-drivers and techniques for bailing from a mountain bike.

Jezra Lickter, Web Developer

As a jack of all trades, Jezra enjoys reading; writing software in various languages; human locomotion; playing the bagpipes, banjo, and concertina; knitting and crafting; and basically anything semi-productive that will distract him from cleaning up his home.

Heather Dudley, Lead Forums Moderator

Married with two small children, Heather is the East Coast representative for OLL. After spending more hours than she really likes to think about volunteering on the forums, Heather was invited to take over Forums Moderation from Cybele May. She spends entirely too much time at the computer, not getting sleep, moderating the forums and writing the Perfect Novel ™. She has discovered (the hard way) that it is physically impossible to have babies and write novels at the same time… it gets on the doctors’ nerves. One day, she’s gonna make it to the West Coast, and you’ll never get rid of her.

Cybele May, Site Wrangler

One of NaNoWriMo’s far-flung staff members, Cybele lives in Los Angeles where she has ample access to internet at all hours of the day and night. This year marks Cybele’s sixth year on staff and possibly the year of her tenth novel. Fear not, she’ll have plenty to do in November in addition to noveling and working on fine-tuning the site; she also holds down a full-time job and is getting her re-certification as a whale watching naturalist. When not obsessively noveling, she’s obsessively blogging for candyblog.net.

Emily Bristow, ML Captain of Capital Ideas

Emily Bristow loves reading, writing, and writers. Her background includes print journalism (with photos!), TV production, and technical writing. She’s been Nano-ing since 2002, Austin, Texas’ Municipal Liaison since 2004, and a Nano-staffer since 2008. Projects for OLL include the Fundraising Pilot Project, the Donation Derby, and the ML Mentor Program. She’s also an ML Forum Moderator. In her spare time, Emily makes art and frets about her many novels-in-progress.

Cylithria Dubois, Beta Tester Wrangler and YWP Forums Moderator

Cylithria Dubois was born with no fear and an extreme sense of adventure. By the age of 13, she’d travelled half of the planet and spent more time with indigenous cultures then she’d spent with her own family. With degrees in fine/graphic arts, she decided corporate life wasn’t for her and by adulthood, she’d begun traveling the world in official capacity with the US Marines. Three of her 11 NaNoWriMo Novels have been written from various hot spots around the world and her other novels were written in numerous regions throughout the USA. Currently, Cylithria writes from Kansas City, MO. She enjoys disc golfing, board games, and trying strange and new beverages while her pet fish watches with longing.