NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

To help you all get to know our new Young Writers Program Director Chris Angotti, we had our rocking intern Candace ask Chris some really important questions.

What’s your favorite way to spend your free time?

I live in Berkeley, so I like to hang around town and go out to local restaurants. I like record shopping, going to movies, watching TV, and running. I like buying good food at farmers’ markets and cooking it. And of course, I like writing.

Have you done NaNoWriMo before? Had you even heard about it before applying for this job?

I’d been hearing about it for years, probably starting in about 2001, mostly on blogs of people who were doing it. But at the time I was in college, and then I was in grad school, and then I was teaching, so it didn’t seem didn’t seem realistic for me. Now, I’m finally forced to!

Any ideas what your novel’s going to be about this year?

Oh gosh… I think I’m going to take Chris Baty’s advice: Start with nothing and see what comes out of it.

And Script Frenzy? We hear there might be a screenplay from the dark recesses of your past that someday might see the light of day?

I like to keep my checkered past as out of the spotlight as I can, but I think I may be able to put something together. Maybe a musical biopic about my fourth-grade rap career? I used to write screenplays with my friends in high school, but nothing ever really got completed... It would be nice to finish a movie script that kept some of that crazy teenage spirit. Probably with fewer walruses as major characters.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve done in the last five years?

That’s an outrageous question. You need to give me a moment, because I’ve done so many cool things in the last five years… Last summer, I drove across the country from New York to Berkeley when I was relocating. Over that year, including that road trip, I was in fifteen states. Otherwise, I was mostly busy teaching… Which is cool by itself, but in a different way.

What did you teach?

I spent three years in New York City teaching middle school and high school English.

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I really wanted to be a game show host or an explorer—oftentimes I would combine the two into some crazy outfit or costume to wear around. I would be holding a microphone and have binoculars strapped to my belt. I’m not sure what kind of game show that would be, but it seemed really awesome at the time.

What are you most looking forward to doing here at the Office of Letters and Light?

I’m looking forward to working on the Young Writers Program websites for both NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy, and making them really teacher-friendly. I want to continue to expand them, to make them more interesting and exciting and fun—not only for educators, but also for students. I think that’s my first priority.