Tavia Stewart-Streit
Young Writers Program Director
Tavia is the Young Writers Program Director for Script Frenzy and National Novel Writing Month. Tavia graduated with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Since 2006, she has written four terrible novels and two not-as-terrible scripts. In her spare time, she works as an editor and curator for the Berkeley-based literary organization Watchword Press. She loves food, playing Mario Bros., and has recently become a "Mrs."

Jennifer Arzt Script Frenzy's Program Director
Jennifer Arzt holds a MFA in Film, Television and Recording Arts where she pursued writing, directing, and producing. Her films have appeared in festivals around the country. She made her parents proud when she won the Directors Guild of America Student Film Award.

Prior to film school, Jennifer considered careers in lion taming, SCUBA diving, toy store management, and time traveling.

Chris Baty
Executive Director
A resident of Oakland, California, Chris has been heading up NaNoWriMo (Script Frenzy's sister event) 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 writers everywhere. Chris is an anthropologist by training and 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.

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.

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.

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 Earl
Shipping Captain

Bradford is an east coast refugee who has sought asylum from his sordid past in the remote hills of Oakland. He spends his days getting you your precious Frenzy gear and nights with more ice cream than any one person should ever see. Bradford enjoys drawing tiny pictures of monsters and coming up with new and interesting ways to grow his mustache.

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.

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 be helpful!

Elise Running
Intern

Elise is a Junior at the University of Southern California where she studies Cinema-Television and Screenwriting. After she graduates, Elise will pursue a career in screenwriting and directing while living in a beautiful flat in London with her gorgeous husband, Leonardo DiCaprio. When Elise isn’t studying or writing, you can find her dancing, playing with her new puppy, and designing costumes.

The Young Writers Program Editorial Board of Directors

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."

Lily Jones
Language Arts Consultant 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.

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 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 (hopefully) doing some writing of his own. He is somewhat eager to get back to teaching everyday.

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, 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.

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!