Press Releases
High-Resolution Photographs
NaNoWriMo Pan-Bay Area Kick Off Party, October 2006
NaNoWriMo Pan-Bay Thank God It's Over Party, December 1, 2006
(photo credits: all photos by Ken Goudey)
High-Resolution NaNoWriMo Logo
Newsletters
In the News
2007 Stories
The Boston Globe
"In the lines of fire: Soldiers take to fiction writing contest to help combat the stress of war." 11/07
Chicago Tribune
"I think the beauty of this is that I'm not grading what they are writing. It allows them to unhinge the trap door of ideas," said Rushek. "I'm of the holistic perspective that one must write before they write well." 11/07
NPR's On the Media
A short audio clip on NaNoWriMo, courtesy of NPR. 11/07
Chicago Public Radio
F. Scott Fitzgerald spent eight years writing Tender Is the Night. Finnegan's Wake took James Joyce seventeen years to complete. But this November, some Chicagoans are joining a global community of writers trying to finish novels in just 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Audio clip & transcript 11/07
2006 Stories
The Washington Post
"If this growth rate is constant and participation is cumulative, then every American will be writing a novel in November 2027. We'll be a country made entirely of boozing, tortured authors." 11/06
The Boston Globe
"Amiya Seligman, also 10, was about halfway through her 8,000-word story about a land of magical creatures, a baby who's reincarnated every 5,000 years, and an epic battle between good and evil." 11/06
Statistics
Founded: 1999 in Oakland, CA
Annual participant/winner totals:
1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,813 participants and 12,948 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners
Number of official NaNoWriMo chapters around the world: Over 500
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2005: Over 100
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2006: Over 300
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2007: 366
Number of NaNoWriMo manuscripts that have been sold to big-time publishing houses: Many (details below)
Percent of NaNoWriMo's net proceeds from donations and merchandise sales that went to build libraries for children in Southeast Asia 2004-2006: 50%
Number of libraries NaNoWriMo has built through this program: Twenty-two (three in Cambodia, seven in Laos, an anticipated twelve in Vietnam, pending 2006 financials)
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2004 event: 428,164,975
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2005 event: 714,227,354
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2006 event: 982,564,701
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2007 event: 1,187,931,929
Contacts
Participants
You can contact local participants in your area for interviews by checking out our Contact page to see if your area has a Municipal Liaison. These goodly folks are the volunteer chapter heads for the area, and they can help put you in touch with participants and let you know when the next writing event in your area will take place.
If your area doesn't have an ML, you can get in touch with participants directly in several different ways. The first is by going to our Author page and searching under your city. Of the people listed, some will have chosen to leave their emails visible, and you can contact them directly via email about setting up an interview. You can also post a message in your area's Regional Lounge on our Forums. To do so, you'll need to sign-up for the event. We ask that journalists make themselves conspicuous by putting PRESS (in all caps) somewhere in their username. This also helps with our housekeeping, as we can go in and delete these accounts at the end of the event.
Published NaNoWriMo Authors
(Warner Books, 2004) and Maybe Baby (Warner Books, 2005). Contact: www.lanidianerich.com
(HarperCollins, 2005) and Water for Elephants (Algonquin, 2007). Contact: www.saragruen.com
(Ballantine Books, 2006). Contact: http://rebecca.agiewich.net
(Berkeley Books, 2006). Contact: www.FrancescaSegre.com.
(Five Star/Gale, 2006). Contact: Five Star/Gale
(Mills & Boon, 2006). Contact: www.jennabayleyburke.com
If you have more questions, or if you would like to interview a member of the NaNoWriMo staff,
email us at press@nanowrimo.org.