A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For March 15-21, 2023

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. It's the first newsletter of Spring, which means that this week's email should be pleasantly brisk, with an undercurrent of warmth and a subtle peaty smell. We hope you enjoy the sensory experience more than the one we set up for our winter newsletter, with the arctic blast and odor of damp wool.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

This Getaway Car Is from "Pimp My Ride" by Ben Lyons (Points in Case) Ben made a lot of great decisions writing this piece: Having the titular car be badminton-themed is a brilliant, well-calibrated, delightfully specific choice; the high-stakes car chase setting adds a level of urgency that makes the badminton-car details hit even harder; and those two elements are kept in balance with some great sentence-level joke writing. ("Damn, looks like the cops found us. I’m guessing they either clocked our plate number or they recognized the custom spoiler shaped like the feathers of a shuttlecock.")

Well, Well, Well, Mom Says She Can’t Pause Online Bridge Game by Ella Gale (Hard Drive) The voice of the narrator is so much fun and so well-developed. The rhythms and pacing of the narration are particularly strong thanks to Ella's adroit use of line breaks and punctuation. ("You. Can’t. Pause. Your. Online. Bridge. Game?")

I’ve Had It With Stunt Ice Cream Flavors by Jesse Sparks (Eater) Sometimes reality is more humorous than anything you could invent. Jesse's descriptions of the different flavors are wonderfully evocative and very funny. And if any of our readers have tried any of the stunt ice creams in the article, please drop us a line and give us your review--especially if you want to advocate for one of the flavors!
 

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An Old Favorite

This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #115.

My Vagina has Closed for Business to Make Way for an Artisinal Deli by Giulia De Vita (McSweeney's) Sometimes, in writing a piece, you come up with an A+ title--one that's big, bold, and will absolutely kill the second anyone sees or hears it. And then, a couple of paragraphs in, you realize that it was just a title, and not a conceit for a whole piece. Lucky for us readers, that's not the case here. This piece starts strong right off the bat, and then keeps on going strong. It's a great, creative idea that's fantastically executed.

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 Newsletter

James will be reading some humor and talking about his role as managing editor of Points In Case at the NYC Writers Circle Reading Series next week! The show is on Wednesday 3/29, 7:00 pm at KGB Bar, and is totally free! There will also be readings by McKayley Gourley, Eliel Lucero, Daniel Nester, and Anton Yakovlev, and the show is hosted by Nat Kimber and Talia BarNoy. It's going to be a blast, and you can get more info here! Looking forward to seeing you there!

Luke's got a Tuesday night edition of his advanced humor writing workshop, Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces, starting on April 18th! He does weeknight workshops much less frequently, so if weeknights work better for your schedule, you'll want to get in on this section--it might be a few months before he does another one at this time!

And if you can't make a four-week workshop, Luke's also doing a single session workshop on April 23rd that's all about how to get helpful feedback on your writing and give helpful feedback in return, balancing constructive criticism with encouragement, and honesty with kindness.

DC Pierson's newsletter featured some writing by James this week, about his elementary school transformation into the incompetent math wizard James The Magnificant. You can read the story here, and if you're not already, you should sign up for DC's newsletter -- it's always very funny!

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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.

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!