Media Kit + Press Clips
Welcome to our media page!
You will find just about everything you ever wanted to know about NaNoWriMo on this page! We’ve included our most recent press releases and newsletters, a list of astounding stats, interviews with our staff, selected press, and a list of published Wrimos! If you can’t find the information you’re looking for, try the History page, or get in touch with us!
2011 Press Release
Stats
Founded by: Freelance writer Chris Baty and 20 other overcaffeinated yahoos in 1999.
Now run by: The Office of Letters and Light, an august 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Oakland.
How NaNoWriMo got from there to here: It’s a funny story, actually.
Annual participant/winner totals 1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,813 participants and 12,948 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners
2008: 119,301participants and 21,683 winners
2009: 167,150 participants and 32,178 winners
2010: 200,500 participants and 37, 500 winners
2011: 256, 618 participants and 36, 843 winners
Number of official NaNoWriMo chapters around the world: Over 500
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2005: Over 100
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2006: Over 300
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2007: 366
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2008: 600
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2009: 1,295
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2010: 1,800
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2011: 2,000
Number of NaNoWriMo manuscripts that have been sold to publishing houses: Many (details below)
Number of words officially logged during the 2004 event: 428,164,975
Number of words officially logged during the 2005 event: 714,227,354
Number of words officially logged during the 2006 event: 982,564,701
Number of words officially logged during the 2007 event: 1,187,931,929
Number of words officially logged during the 2008 event: 1,643,343,993
Number of words officially logged during the 2009 event: 2,427,190,537
Number of words officially logged during the 2010 event: 2,872,682,109
Number of words officially logged during the 2011 event: 3,074,068,446
Setting up Interviews
Staff Please get in touch if you’d like to interview one of our staff members! We’d love to chat with you! October and November is an especially busy time for us, so we don’t always have time to interview with everyone, but please drop us a line! You can also find official interviews with our staff here. Feel free to quote from and reference these interviews in your articles, and get in touch if you have any further questions.
Participants The best way to get in touch with participants for interviews is through your region’s Municipal Liaison. These goodly folks are the volunteer chapter heads for the area, and they can help put you in touch with participants and let you know when the next writing event in your area will take place. Please check the ML Page to see if your area has a Municipal Liaison you can contact. If you have an account on our site, you can get in touch with them by clicking on their site username and sending them a message via NaNoMail, the site-based messaging system. If your area doesn’t have an ML, you can contact participants directly in several different ways. The first is by going to our Search page and searching under your city. You can then send these participants a NaNoMail directly about your article. We ask that journalists make themselves conspicuous by putting PRESS (in all caps) somewhere in their username. (This helps with our housekeeping, as we can go in and delete these accounts at the end of the event.) You can also simply post a message in your area’s Regional Lounge.
Published NaNoWriMo Authors
Click here for a complete list of published NaNoWriMo authors.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes— Persistence of Memory
Gayle Brandeis— Self Storage
Jessica Burkhart— Take the Reins
Sarah Dooley— Livvie Owen Lived Here
Ann Gonzalez— Running for My Life
T. Greenwood— The Hungry Season (Kensington, 2010). Contact: www.tgreenwood.com/thsindex.html
Sara Gruen— Flying Changes
Denise Jaden– Losing Faith
Lani Diane Rich— Time Off for Good Behavior
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen— The Compound
If you have more questions, just drop us a line.
Selected Press Clippings
Oakland North: “Chabot Elementary students pen novels in afterschool program.” (12/10)
BigThink “NaNoWriMo and Literary Spontaneity” (11/11)
Paste Magazine ”Get Inspired: Ten NaNoWriMo Premises We Would Totally Read (And Four We Liked Anyway)” (11/10)
BBC News “Foster’s fiction: Week 1 of National Novel Writing Month” (11/11)
ABC News “Deadline Frenzy: Writing a Novel in 30 Days” (11/10)
West Edmonton Local “NaNoWriMo writers to share manuscripts at open mic event” (11/11)
Los Angeles Times blog “12 reasons to ignore the naysayers: Do NaNoWriMo” (11/10)
Chicago Public Radio F. Scott Fitzgerald spent eight years writing Tender Is the Night. Finnegan’s Wake took James Joyce seventeen years to complete. But this November, some Chicagoans are joining a global community of writers trying to finish novels in just 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Audio clip & transcript (11/07)
The Washington Post “NaNoWriMo: Taking the novel-writing plunge” (11/10)
USA Today PopCandy ”Reminder: NaNoWriMo starts today!” (11/10)
Publisher’s Weekly – ShelfTalker “Indie Bookstores: ‘Come Write In’ with NaNoWriMo” (10/10)
The National ”The novel-writing challenge: 50,000 words in 30 days.” (11/10)
The Huffington Post “NaNoWriMo: Advice From The Fastest Writers Ever “ (11/11)
Seattle Books Examiner “Have you always wanted to write the Great American Novel but struggled to find motivation and time? Well friends, let Nanowrimo be your guide.” (10/10)
Oakland Magazine “Relax, It’s Just a Novel” (10/11)
Cellar Door Stanford University students initiate a NaNoWriMo class, which is now part of the curriculum. (11/09)
Austin Literature Examiner “What you need is a strong push over that precipice, something to make you write like you’ve never written before, to take the thinking out and put the productivity in.”(10/10)
Wavedash An interview with NaNoWriMo Community Liaison, Sarah Mackey about writing and technology, and the NaNoWriMo community. (11/10)
Wired UK “National Novel Writing Month, online at NaNoWriMo, is a non-profit ‘literary crusade’, whose mission it is to see aspiring writers turn into perspiring writers, as they work at a furious pace to hit the deliberately tight deadline.” (10/08)
Writer’s Digest “NaNoWriMo is a lot like a literary marathon. Folks from all walks of life come together and dedicate a substantial part of their year to doing something wonderful, tiring and a little bit stupid.” (09/09)
The Boston Globe “In the lines of fire: Soldiers take to fiction writing contest to help combat the stress of war.” (11/07)
NPR’s On the Media A short audio clip on NaNoWriMo, courtesy of NPR. (11/07)
The Washington Post “If this growth rate is constant and participation is cumulative, then every American will be writing a novel in November 2027. We’ll be a country made entirely of boozing, tortured authors.” (11/06)
Slate “The tight, non-negotiable deadline and the challenging minimum word count are the secrets of NaNoWriMo’s genius, because they focus the mind remarkably well.” (11/11)
New York Times The secret to writing a novel in a month is just to do it — and it’s a good idea to accept from the start that, barring miracles, it will be very, very bad. (11/06)
Portland Mercury “November is National Novel Writing Month” (10/05)
The Daily Dot “With 200,000 participants, there’s a lot of demand for 30 Covers in 30 Days, but selection is random and rare.” (11/11)
The Emory Wheel “Surviving National Novel Writing Month” (11/11)
Santa Cruz Sentinel “Novel Writing for Neurotics” (11/11)
Boston.com “Every writer has their own rhythm and habits, and those participating in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) are no exception.” (11/11)
Selected Podcasts
Walking on Air (Part 1) - October 2010
Walking on Air (Part 2) - October 2010
High-res Logos
Are you writing an article about NaNoWriMo? Contact us for the NaNoWriMo logo! If you would like an image for your blog, please use one of the provided web badges.
