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 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.
Russell Uman, Rind Wearing Slave of Word Warring Barbarians
Eschewing alliteration this time around, and ashamed at having failed to update these words since 2004, Russ would like you to know that it never gets any easier, but it just keeps getting better. Russ is responsible for everything technical about NaNoWriMo. He likes Los Angeles as much as he likes San Francisco. Los Angeles makes him laugh harder; San Francisco tastes better. Please let Russ know what's on your mind over at the Site Feedback Forum. (photo credit: SUN Zu-Yi)
Tavia Stewart, Managing Editor and Young Writers Program Director
Tavia is not only able to hold down the fort as the Managing Editor and 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 a old bicycle, and is planning to write her 2007 NaNo-novel based on what she finds at weekly garage sales in her neighborhood.
Erin Allday, Municipal Liaison Headmistress
Erin's stalker tendencies and the great pleasure she takes in asking strangers intimate questions about their lives makes her a natural choice to run NaNoWriMo's Daily Q&A feature. Trapped in Berkeley for 12 years, she has worked for several daily newspapers in the Bay Area. When not working 12-hour days writing articles about the global economy that nobody wants to read, Erin spends as much time as possible watching bad television, beating her best time at Minesweeper, taking apart small electrical appliances, and avoiding phone calls.
Cybele May, Hawk-Eyed Forums Moderator
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. '06 year marks Cybele's second year on staff and possibly the year of her sixth novel. Fear not, she'll have plenty to do in November in addition to noveling and moderating the forums; she also holds down a full-time job and is getting her re-certification as a whale watching
naturalist this fall. When not obsessively noveling, she's obsessively writing plays, blogging for
candyblog.net & blogging.la and obsessively taking photos (over 40,000 by now) .