Author/ Executive Director@National Novel Writing Month

Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He's published two books on writing,Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Writer's Digest, and The Writer. He also co-hosts Write-minded, a weekly podcast on writing and publishing.

Author/ Writing Instructor@National Novel Writing Month + UC Berkeley

Aya de León teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning Justice Hustlers feminist heist series, includingSide Chick Nation, the first novel published about Hurricane Maria. In December Kensington will publish her first standalone novel,A Spy in the Struggle, and this year, Aya also published her first children's chapter bookEquality Girls and the Purple Reflecto-Ray. Aya's work has appeared in Ebony, Bitch Magazine, VICE, The Root, Catapult, Electric Lit, and Ploughshares. Aya is at work on a black/Latina spy girl series for teens called Going Dark. She would never have managed to publish six books in five years without the help of the NaNoWriMo process.