A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For January 10-16, 2024

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. On February 1st we will be sending out our first newsletter via Buttondown, the new platform we'll be using since TinyLetter is shutting down! The newsletter will continue to be free and you won't have to do anything, we'll be transferring over our full subscriber list and archive. We just want to let people know ahead of time to keep an eye out on February 1st to make sure that the newsletter doesn't get caught in the ol' spam folder.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

You Shouldn't Have Messed with a Philosopher, and I'll Prove It from First Principles by Lillie Franks (Points in Case) We're big fans of Lillie's work here at Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ), and this piece, which hilariously juxtaposes tough talk and philosophy, and manages to be erudite without being inaccessible, is another real winner from her.

Among Linguists, the Word of the Year Is More of a Vibe by Sam Corbin (The New York Times) The inside scoop about how the American Dialect Society picks its word of the year, from the very funny Sam Corbin. (If you aren't already familiar with her work, Sam has written humor pieces for the New Yorker and is one of the hosts of the great Vocabaret.) It can be difficult to infuse a reported article with humor, but Sam pulls it off by packing this piece full of delightful specifics and well-observed details.

All the Types of Science Fiction by Horst Smokowski (McSweeney's) A very fun list piece that moves really nicely, thanks to a bunch of carefully placed runs and callbacks. The brisk pacing is particularly impressive given how many entries there are on this list (a tremendous fifty)!
 

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Do you like sea creatures? Do you have any terrible exes, or plan to some day? Order a copy of Deep-sea Creeps: A Field Guide to Terrible Ex-boyfriends (As Sea Creatures), out this week from Smith Street Books. Written by New Yorker contributor and bad-boyfriend scholar Danielle Kraese, this witty guide will take you through a taxonomy of mystifying exes, from The Self-Proclaimed “Nice Guy” to The Egomaniac, and even The Ex Who Wanted To Break Up (But Wanted You To Do It). Deep-sea Creeps is available from your favorite indie bookstore or mega retailer!

(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)

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Writers Write About Their Own Writing

Evan Waite, Whose Book Life Wants You Dead, Is Now Available For Preorder, Writes About When You’re Looking for the Very Best (The New Yorker)

I wrote this piece to read at the Humor and Satire Fest in NYC back in 2019 (hosted by James Folta, Caitlin Kunkel and Tulio Espinoza). I don’t love performing, and I knew this would be a large crowd full of people I respect, so I spent a ton of time rewriting the piece until it felt like it wouldn’t bomb. The New Yorker’s Emma Allen happened to be in the audience that night, and so I sent it to her the following week and she went for it. (Although she did remove one of the pube jokes, she also left one of the pube jokes, which is one more pube joke than I ever thought would get in.)

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

Masters of the Nefarious, the cult classic comedy comic that Luke translated from French, continues to be available for preorder! Thanks to everyone who has already ordered a copy (let Luke know if you did too)! Luke also just announced his lineup of February short humor workshops, with four-week classes starting Feb 10th and Feb 13th (just 4 spots left), and a single-session workshop Feb 11th!
 

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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.

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