A resident of Oakland, California, Chris has been heading up NaNoWriMo 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 novelists 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.

• Web site