About Us

Ansley Ashe first took the NaNoWriMo dare in 2011 when she moved from the Southeast to the Midwest. Along the way she found a supportive community, and became a co-founder and co-organizer of a local literary festival which brought in over 1000 participants this past summer. She is making a transition from wrestling mom and soccer coach to full-fledged novelist. She has loved mysteries since she was a little girl, so when it came time to choose a genre, mystery was a natural fit. She is in the process of releasing a series of holiday themed novelettes and pushing out her first novel.

Chris Baty founded NaNoWriMo in 1999 and oversaw the organization until 2012. He’s spent the last decade wrangling words at Figma and Dropbox and teaching creative writing courses through Stanford’s continuing studies program. Chris is the author of No Plot? No Problem! and the co-author of Ready, Set, Novel. He lives in California with his wife, son, two cats, and mutinous army of houseplants.

As a young writer, Coral Sands struggled with finding the confidence to finish a book, as many writers do. She heard of the NaNoWriMo challenge, but would chicken out due to imposter syndrome. She was scared to try and to fail until one day she got the courage to try it for the first time—and WON. Shortly after, she became a Municipal Liaison for seven years before everything happened.

Drew Patty is one of those rare writer-editor hybrids. When he’s not working on UX or feeding his kids, he’s probably reading fantasy, writing fantasy, or playing Wordle. His first NaNoWriMo win was in 2003, and he’s been a NaNo fan (and occasional winner) ever since. Drew lives in Munich, Germany, with his wife and three daughters.

Emily Lin Hasham is a fantasy & sci-fi binge reader who is hoping to expand her passion for stories from consumption to creation. She’s attempted many a NaNoWriMo in the past, and will be chasing her “win” this year. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and kitty.

Gertrude Daly is very proud to say that writing is her full-time job. She works as the Technical Publications Lead for a material handling company. After hours, Gertrude runs the blog, Gert’s Royals and has published several short stories. Gertrude learned about NaNoWriMo in middle school. And for the first decade, her experience was mostly solitary and ended in defeat after week one. The first time Gertrude won NaNoWriMo was the year she had an accountability partner and participated in every possible write-in she could. NaNoWriMo led her to two year-round writing groups, The Writing Journey and First Draft Detroit

Ivy Chang is a longtime lover of stories. She designs with them and occasionally also tackles the scary task of writing them. When not outside catching Pokémon, you can find her tinkering with iOS apps. Her joy of making is compounded by being a part of the NaNoWriMo community. She lives by the ocean with her partner and pup.

Kristina Horner is perhaps best-known for “The NaNoWriMo Song”, a silly bop and the unofficial novel writing anthem that’s been getting stuck in participants’ heads for almost two decades. She currently hosts the podcast Write Your Damn Novel (formerly “How to Win NaNo”) and owns an indie publishing company called 84th Street Press. In her regular life Kristina works in the gaming industry and runs a local writing group that’s been meeting regularly since 2015.

Dr. Kathy Kitts (AKA Apollo16 on the old site) wrote her first novel in 2003 and began to officially volunteer two years later. However, she didn’t consider herself a novelist until she completed her third NaNoWriMo challenge in 2005. When she first participated, she was a planetary geologist who served on the NASA Discovery Missions Genesis among others, but her life’s trajectory was so altered by her NaNo experience that she retired early and has just completed her Creative Writing MFA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She blames Chris Baty.

After 20 years of wrangling 8th graders to write, Laura Bradley stumbled across the Young Writers Program of NaNoWriMo and her life was forever changed. At the time it felt like stepping blindly off a cliff, but the reality was even more exciting and far less painful. She saw her students jump enthusiastically into the most challenging writing assignment she had ever given, find their unique and powerful voices, and proudly share their clever, chaotic stories. Their creativity inspired her to pen her first novel along with them.

Lucie Lane first participated in NaNoWriMo when she was 13 years old and has attempted to write 50,000 words every November since. Her passion for the challenge led her to serve as a NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison as well as a community moderator for the “Write Your Damn Novel” podcast. In 2024, she cofounded the bi-annual creative challenge Rough Draft Month, which provides a gentle push as well as resources and community support to artists and writers of all skill levels.

Liz Leo is an internet jack of all trades who loves storytelling in all its forms— from novels, to graphic design and illustration, to interactive fiction. She’s been an avid NaNo-er since 2007, and co-hosts the podcast Write Your Damn Novel (formerly “How to Win NaNo”). She currently works as a creative producer in the gaming industry where she finds it just as fulfilling to support creatives as she does to create.

Maria Berejan lives in the greater Seattle area with her husband, 3 cats, an unknown amount of plants, and a variety of wildlife visitors including bobcats, bears, and a raccoon named Fred. She works in tech and collects hobbies like a fiend, writing being one of the longest-lived ones. She started doing NaNoWriMo in 2006 as a high schooler and it became a central focus in her life every Fall. She co-founded 84th Street Press, published 3 anthologies, was a NaNo ML for the Seattle region for a few years, and continues to participate in a long-running weekly writing group.

Paige Anteau is a middle school math and English teacher teaching the Young Novelist Challenge in her classroom. She first participated in NaNoWriMo in 2006 as an AP English student and has written novels or short story anthologies in November (and sometimes other months) nearly every year since. In 2022, she finally decided to volunteer as the Municipal Liaison of the Montana: Elsewhere region. When she stepped down in 2024 to focus on her master’s degree, she vowed to return as an ML upon graduation. Instead, she found NaNo 2.0.

Rachael Waldburger has done (and won!) NaNoWriMo every year since 2011, and has participated in the Young Writer Challenge with her middle school students since 2014. Since stepping away from the classroom last year, she has focused on publishing her poetry, YA fantasy, and romantic suspense novels, hosting the Words Are Hard podcast with her non-writer brother, running the writing communities at Writers Coop and Write Like a Mother, and wrangling her two small children and two mostly unhelpful cats. This year, she’s returning to “class” as a school librarian, where she’ll be encouraging students in preschool through 8th grade to develop their stories through the Young Novelist Challenge.

Sana Shah is the product designer on the Young Novelist Challenge. Sana has been a long time fan of NaNoWriMo from a distance and is trying for her first novel this November. Outside of pixel pushing and thinking through user flows, Sana is an artist, gamer, and attempted caregiver of six blueberry bushes. She lives in Silver Spring, MD with her husband and sassy cat Aya.

Sara Lin is the product designer on the new word-count tracker. This November marks her first time attempting NaNoWriMo herself—a little nerve-wracking. When she’s not in Figma, she’s camping in the Sierras or the redwoods with her family, working on an art project, or reading history and science fiction. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their elementary-school-aged kid.

Sara Skaines has been writing novels specifically in the month of November for 15 years. In her career, she has worked with many nonprofits focused on support for children, young adults, and single mothers. She has worked in case management, fundraising, public relations, cross-channel marketing, and strategic planning.  Sara has been a part of the “Write Your Damn Novel” team since 2021, and cofounded Rough Draft Month: a bi-annual creative challenge for writers, artists, and anyone else who wants to take the plunge to finish their original project.

Tavia Stewart was employee number one at NaNoWriMo back in 2006. She co-authored Ready, Set, Novel! (Chronicle Books) and created the original K–12 curriculum and novel-writing workbooks for the Young Writers Program. Over the course of 10 years, she served as NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program Director and later as COO, before leaving in 2014 to co-found Chapter 510, a writing, publishing, and bookmaking center in Oakland, CA. She is also the co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute and now works as a nonprofit consultant.

Thomas A. Knight is a fantasy author and senior platform architect from southwestern Ontario, Canada. His novels chronicle the trials and tribulations of characters living on the alternate world of Galadir, a place with as much mystery as it has magic. When he’s not writing or working, he spends time with his family, and enjoys role-playing and collectible card games.

Tim Yao is a founding member of the Writing Journey, a writing community near Chicago that grew from a core group that bonded over NaNoWriMo participation. Tim’s short stories and poems appear in the Journey anthologies.