Tavia Stewart-Streit, Young Writers Program Director
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.
Chris Baty, The Office of Letters and Light Executive Director and NaNoWriMo Program 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)
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.
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.
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).
The Young Writers Program Editorial Board of Directors
Lily Jones, Language Arts Consultant and Curriculum Developer for Elementary School
Lily Jones spends her days explaining the wonders of the world to the kindergarten and first graders she teaches at North Oakland Community Charter School. In November 2007, she led her first graders through NaNoWriMo for the first time. During that month Lily's students impressed her with their inexplicable excitement for counting words, writing stories about monsters going crazy for candy (among other things), and responding to her requests by saying "Not now, I'm writing a novel." When not surrounded by little kids, Lily enjoys lying on her huge comfy couch, drinking tea, and reading.
Kaymaria Daskarolis, Language Arts Consultant for High School
Proud Oakland resident Kaymaria can't remember the last time she was bored. In addition to participating in NaNoWriMo 2008 and Script Frenzy 2009 at the invitation of her friend and fellow author Shannon (writer on the right in the photo above), she teaches high school English, runs Mason Street Productions with her brother Peter, serves as president of the George Daskarolis Foundation, dances, boxes, and travels/reads/watches movies/writes at every opportunity. One thing she is committed to doing every single day is taking her dogs out---the actual canines who share her home, not her dogs as in, "Who let the dogs out!?" One of her most rewarding teaching experiences involved guiding her 9th and 10th graders through Script Frenzy---as one student who didn't reach his page goal articulated, "I may not have finished my screenplay, but I wrote 12 more pages of a script than most people will write in their entire lives."
Zulema Renee Summerfield, Creative Writing Consultant/Curriculum Developer
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 in 2006, 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, and 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.
Rachel Walman, Language Arts Consultant for Middle School/Curriculum Developer
Rachel Walman earned a BA in history from Grinnell College, an M. Ed. from Lesley University, and currently resides in Davis with her wonderful boyfriend Ethan, baker of amazing pies. As a former Teaching Fellow with Citizen Schools—a national after-school program that engages students in hands-on learning after school—Rachel worked with NaNoWriMo to develop a creative writing curriculum for after-school programs. Rachel's wildly fascinating interests include nineteenth-century urban history, eating, movies, knitting, and "playing" softball. Rachel makes ends meet by working as a receptionist in a law firm while she applies to museum studies programs and dreams of writing a screenplay—during the next Script Frenzy!
Jake Strohm, Language Arts Consultant for Elementary School
Jacob Strohm has taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in San Francisco for thirteen years at Jose Ortega Elementary. He is currently enjoying a one year sabbatical, highlighted by two and a half months of driving all over the country with his two year old son Elijah strapped in the backseat. His plans for the rest of the year include helping Elijah learn to play the drum set, hanging out at the new science museum, and doing some writing of his own. He is somewhat eager to get back to teaching everyday.
National Novel Writing Month's Powerful Team of Interns
Julia Burdette, Intern
Julia currently lives one block from her public library and within walking distance of NaNoWriMo headquarters, making her recent escape from Los Angeles only that much sweeter. Over the summer, she learned exactly how to wield an electric saw with both grace and power, the result of building a yurt in the middle of nowhere. (And whittle, also. She whittled.) Julia has built her virtual home at tothesound.com, and she recently cancelled cable in the hopes of turning herself into someone capable of writing a 50,000 word novel.
Amy Hakanson, Intern
While admiring the brave souls who try their hand at NaNoWriMo from afar, Amy is delighted to be interning for the people who make it happen at the Office of Letters and Light and hopes to soak up all the knowledge she can possibly cram in her brain. She misses the creative environment that San Francisco State provided her before she graduated with her BA in English – Creative Writing and is happy to enter a positive writing environment once more! She is entirely too addicted to traveling across America and documenting all the curiosities it has to offer with her trusty camera, and hopes that some of her adventures will inspire her first NaNo-novel this November.
Grace Kao, Intern
Grace is a junior at UC Berkeley hoping to double major in English and Chinese (and every other discipline humanly possible). She spends far too much time looking for beautiful things, and delights in hot tea, good books, film cameras, watercolors, and the kindness of strangers. She hopes that one day, she will have the courage to actually finish a whole novel – which will then promptly occupy the bottommost corner of her desk. Or not.
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.
Natalie Tsang, Intern
Originally from Orange County, Natalie is now a proud resident of the Bay Area. She believes that A. A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner is the repository of all earthly knowledge. She continues to have a healthy fascination with stuffed animals and things that resemble stuffed animals, such as cats. She is easily bribed with gifts of books and food, and delighted to embark on her first novel writing adventure in such good company!
Carolyn Beaty, Intern
Though her primary expertise is with scholarly essays (being a college student) and 4th grade book reports (due to some work with 826 Valencia), she is ready to work on something a little more lengthy. Something like a novel. "Between being a full-time student and a part-time person, how could she possibly have time to write a novel," one might ask. The answer is that she is a hair away from being certifiably insane and has taken up residence in a coffee shop near her house. Other interests include cultivating a cactus garden on her desk, cycling, and taking BART.
Tim Kim, Intern
Tim is a graduate of UCSD’s literature department, but don’t hold that against them. They’re pretty nice people. Timothy is also an extremely serious, driven, Type-A personality. Raised to believe that there is nothing he can’t achieve, he is currently hard at work forestalling the robot revolution, building a moon shuttle in his backyard, and brainstorming ideas for his 50,000 word magnum opus. He would ask you not to bother him, he's busy, but the last time he did that to someone, his mom smacked him in the back of the head and it still stings.
