Chris Baty, Program Director
A resident of Oakland, California, Chris has been heading up NaNoWriMo since founding the escapade in 1999. With his startlingly mediocre prose style and complete inability to write credible dialogue, Chris has set a reassuringly low bar for budding novelists everywhere. Chris is an anthropologist by training and a freelance writer by trade; his work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Believer, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. When not bossing strangers around, Chris spends debilitating amounts of time in coffee shops. His mercilessly pants-kicking book, No Plot? No Problem!, is available at your favorite bookstore.
Tavia Stewart-Streit, Young Writers Program Director and Operations Manager
Tavia is not only able to hold down the fort as the Young Writers Program Director at the Office of Letters and Light, she is also able to write novels, plan events for Watchword Press, and run a reading series for the More Cowgirl Writers Collective. She's worked with the genius minds that make up both ZYZZYVA and McSweeney's Publishing, has taught her cat to play fetch, is currently looking to purchase an old bicycle, and is planning to write her 2008 NaNo-novel based on what she finds at weekly garage sales in her neighborhood.
Lindsey Grant, Community Liaison
After Lindsey finished her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Mills College, she stumbled upon the magical place that is the Office of Letters and Light. She could hardly believe that there were so many people in the world who love words as much as she does! She enjoys writing about food and travel, but not quite as much as she enjoys eating food while traveling. She is fighting against inertia and excoriating self-edits in order to finish a novel based on her years as a dog-walker.
Dan Duvall, Tech Manager
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.
Bradford Earle, Shipping Captain
Bradford is a newly minted [adjective] person. He was previously an idea on the East Coast in the wasteland commonly known as [proper noun]. He spends most of his time composing mediocre [noun] and painting marginal works of [noun] in a valiant (albeit ineffective) attempt to impress the woman he [verb]s. His history is a [noun], as ideas are [adverb] difficult to examine. In his new [adjective] form he is likely to be found [verb]ing small bears or imitating [noun] in his free time. He wants to help [pronoun] with any and all insurmountable difficulties (as long as they relate to shipping).
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 fourth year on staff and possibly the year of her eighth 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 writing plays, blogging for candyblog.net.
Emily Bristow, ML Captain of Capital Ideas
Born to a wealthy Houston family, Emily (or lazym, as she is widely known) was stolen by gypsies from her unattended pram. Her promising career as a pickpocket was cut short one Halloween by an unfortunate incident involving the Chief of Police. Trained to write by a kindly reformatory matron, she was then indentured to an evil software titan in Washington State. During a daring midnight escape, Emily absconded with a stack of company stock. She is now a mixed-media artist and writer of six unfinished NaNo novels. Emily has been the Austin, Texas Municipal Liaison since 2004 and wants YOU to donate to NaNoWriMo today.
Heather Dudley, Forums Moderator
Married with two small children, Heather is the East Coast representive 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 (tm). 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.
Drew Patty, Email Abassador
Drew was raised in the architecturally rich town of Columbus, Indiana. He moved to the Bay Area to pursue his dreams of becoming a Creative Editor for a publishing company. Drew believes that passwords will be the downfall of us all, but he prefers that over some sort of crazy flu. He is very honored to be tapped as NaNoWriMo E-mail Ambassador for a second year in a row. He promises not to abuse his power.
Elaine Tai, Intern
While trying to figure out her life, Elaine happily found herself at the Office of Letters and Light. She received a Business degree from UC Berkeley in May and soon decided to apply it to the book world. Elaine can often be sighted wandering around bookstores throughout the Bay Area, trying to resist the urge to buy some children's or YA fantasy novel. Her other loves include coffee, tech blogs, and a ridiculous amount of television. She has no idea what her first NaNo-novel will be about, but she is told this is not a problem and takes it as a fun way to procrastinate on grad school applications.