BERKELEYSIDE -- Faulkner, who lives in North Berkeley with his wife, the novelist Heather Mackey, and his 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, said he knew from the time he was little that he would become a writer because he spent his allowance on pens and paper, not candy or toys. He later earned a degree in English from Grinnell College and master’s in writing from San Francisco State University.
“It seems like I should have other degrees, such as an M.F.A. in Novels about People Doing Nothing But Walking Around, a Ph.D. in Collages and Doodles and Stick Drawings of Fruitless Pursuits, or a Knighthood in Insomniac Studies, but I don’t,” Faulker writes on his website.
It’s no coincidence that Grant Faulkner’s latest book, “Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo, has just been published.
Faulkner is the executive director of the Berkeley-based National Novel Writing Month, more commonly known as NaNoWriMo, where hundreds of thousands of people (yes, you read that right) around the globe write a novel in November.
Photo by Toby Burditt