Tavia Stewart, Young Writers Program Director and Managing Editor
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.
Amber Royer, Host of Stump the Librarian
Amber hosts our popular Stump the Librarian contest on the front page of the site. She's an actual, honest-to-goodness (as opposed to an alien robotic) Teen Librarian in the state of Texas. She has a teen writer's group, who will be meeting at her library for write-ins throughout the month of November, and she would like to extend a special "hi!" to all of them. Amber decided she wanted to be a writer in the fourth grade because her English teacher really inspired her. She's almost thirty, married (both she and her husband won NaNoWriMo last year), and has two cats, one of which is lactose intolerant and eats plastic when she's careless enough to leave it around. The other cat looks sweet, right up until somebody pets her, then Amber winds up handing out the Band-Aids.
Zulema Renee Summerfield, Creative Writing Guru
Zulema Renee Summerfield has been reading and writing since as far back as she can remember. And she's loved every minute of it! She wrote her first NaNo-novel last year, and while she didn't make the 50,000-word mark, she's excited to report that she is still working hard on the novel she began. Zulema has worked with young people in all kinds of ways, from teaching them about rocks and squirrels, to helping them write book reports, to leading awesome field trips to petting zoos and amusement parks. Zulema is currently working on her MFA in fiction at San Francisco State University. She lives with her husband (The Incredible Hulk) and her cat (Little One) in San Francisco.
Chris Baty, National Novel Writing Month Executive Director
A proud resident of Oakland, California, Chris has been heading up NaNoWriMo's adult program 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 SF Weekly, the Minneapolis City Pages, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. When not bossing strangers around, Chris spends debilitating amounts of time in coffee shops and record stores. His mercilessly pants-kicking book, No Plot? No Problem!, is available at your favorite bookstore. (photo credit: Elly Karl)
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. (photo credit: Ellen Martin)