A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For March 24-30, 2021, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Our next show is April 2nd at 8 PM ET, streaming on The Squirrel Theater's Twitch.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. One last reminder: Our special streaming edition of An Evening of Humorous Readings, celebrating the release of Jen Spyra's Big Time, is TOMORROW, April 2nd at 8 PM ET, on the Squirrel Theater's Twitch.

It's totally free! All you have to do is head over to the Squirrel Theater's Twitch page at the time of the show. And if you use a Google calendar, you can click this link to add the event to your calendar.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Are You a Sensual Nude Woman in a Classical Painting or Just Naked on Your Couch? by Lily Meyer (McSweeney's) The "____ or ____?" quiz format is often used as a way to draw attention to surprising similarities between two things that, at first blush, would seem to be very different. This piece shows that even when the answer to each question is obvious, the format provides an excellent way to juxtapose different humorous specifics. (And the specifics in this one are very good indeed.)

New and Improved Updates to Slack by Spencer Ham (McSweeney's) This premise is a great way to package a bunch of jokes about Slack. This type of piece lives and dies on the quality of its joke writing--and this one lives! These are some quality jokes.

Honest Drafts of My Goodbye Email by Nikki Palumbo (Weekly Humorist) Even though we know this piece is going to end with the narrator writing a regular goodbye email, it still manages to keep us guessing along the way with good fakeouts and by revealing more and more details about the narrator's work situation. It's also a very satisfying read if you've ever wanted to send this type of email!
 

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An Old Favorite

Examples of Accidental Magic by Tobiah Black (Weekly Humorist) Luke here! If, like me, you read a bunch of Vertigo comics when you were a teenager, this piece will have a familiar resonance. It features narration that wouldn't feel out of place in the opening panels of a classic Hellblazer or Sandman comic--but it's all played explicitly for laughs. It's a great example of how the line between humor writing and fantasy/horror/scifi is often blurrier than you might expect.

Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter. 

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

James is teaching Short Humour for Beginners as part of Pandemic University's Spring ’21 Semester Series! This will be an intro to short humor, as well as a survey of tools and tricks that writers of any level can use. I'll be walking through process and a pre-writing checklist, some short exercises, plus a little Q&A, all in 90 minutes! It's only $16, on April 6th at 1 PM, over Zoom. Be sure to check out the other courses that are part of the spring series -- there are lots of great ones!

See you at the show!

@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.

This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to ​Stand Up To Cancer.

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!