A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #131
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For March 19-25, 2020, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. This month marks our six-year anniversary of hosting the show! If An Evening of Humorous Readings were a child, we'd be packing its little backpack full of short humor and getting it ready for its first day of kindergarten. Typically we celebrate our anniversaries with a big live show each March, but this year we're going to be sharing some memories of the show from friends and fans of the show. Do you have a memory of the show you'd like to share? Or something you've done for six years that's also worth celebrating? Reply to this email with something and we might include it!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Highly Relatable Fantasies for Everyone by Olivia de Recat (The New Yorker) Not to sound too much like a school librarian trying to introduce you to the power of books, but there are entire worlds you can conjure in your mind in the realm of fantasy! And sometimes they're funny, relatable, and very specific.
King Kong, Eighth Wonder Of The World, As Reported On By Today’s Media Outlets by Michelle Spies (Slackjaw) A simple format applied to a fictional news story. As a general rule, if you can work a giant ape into your writing, you should work a giant ape into your writing.
Signs It’s Time to Make Love to Your Ski Instructor in Front of a Raging Fireplace by Dima Kronfeld (Reductress) We've been saying it for years but this piece from Friend of the Show Dima Kronfeld clinches it: short humor can be very sensual. Also, ending this piece with "Good luck!" is very funny.
An Old Favorite
You're Meditating Wrong by Evan Waite and River Clegg (McSweeney's)
Over here at the HRHQ, we've been trying to get into meditation, using short humor pieces about meditation as our guides. This piece by Friends of the Show Evan Waite and River Clegg is a great one to look to for inspiration! This piece has great pacing. Evan and River are excellent at using the spacing and length of their paragraphs to build and release tension.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
While in self-quarantine, we've been re-reading our favorite books and organizing our jars of dried beans in order of most funny to least funny.
Other Humorous Writing News
Slackjaw is bringing back its contest for a second year. There are cash prizes! All the details are here.
News About The Next Show
We're staying in and spending most of our time washing our hands these days, but our favorite venue Caveat has been doing a series of live-streams while NYC is sheltered in place. Tuning in and sending a donation through the link below their videos are both great ways to support the theater and some very cool performers!
See you next week!
@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta
Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!