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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 as the YWP Director 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.
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Lindsey Grant, NaNoWriMo Program Director 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. |
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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.
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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.
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Tavia Stewart-Streit, Operations Manager 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 and ZYZZYVA, 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! When she isn't listening to Pandora while working away at her desk at OLL, she practices yoga, writes short fiction and poetry, and enjoys all the delicious meals her chef husband cooks for her.
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Tim Kim, Office Manager 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, 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.
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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. |
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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. |
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Cylithria Dubois, 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.
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Max Berwald, Intern After spending this fall poking around the backwoods of Hong Kong for bugs and birds, and occasionally “studying” while abroad, Max is excited to be back in California. His great loves are wild rice and black beans, 60’s art-film garbage, and James Ellroy novels, all of which have been known to send him into furious bouts of misguided screenwriting. These screenplays are often finished, never revised, and always pie-stained. Max's last NaNo-novel is currently in purgatory, demanding, among other things, an ending. Endings are hard.
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Paige Knorr, Intern Paige is a fourth-year student taking Communications in Professional Writing from a small University in Edmonton, Alberta. When she’s not writing, she enjoys walking about town, drinking wine, baking tasty treats, and gushing to other people about her cats. She is also struggling to overcome her used bookstore addiction; progress is slow. Paige is thrilled to be interning with OLL through to December—especially given the temperature difference between Edmonton and Berkeley.
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Arianna Asercion, Intern Ari graduated from UC Santa Cruz and then immediately took a nap. When she woke up, she concluded that real life must begin now, and so decided to intern at the Office of Letters and Light, which has proven to be way more fun other aspects of real life! When not interning, she can usually be found writing letters, playing blues guitar, reading about typography, and eating all types of deliciousness. When not doing any of these—let's not kid ourselves—she's probably on the internet. |
