A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #369
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For November 27 - December 3, 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. Don’t forget that we’re hosting an end-of-the-year humor hang next Wednesday, December 11th! Join us at Peculier Pub in NYC at 6 PM for a drink!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Obscure Familial Relations, Explained for the Holidays by Lillian Stone (The New Yorker) This is a very clear and clever premise, and Lillian fills it with great jokes, callbacks, and runners — top to bottom, it’s extremely well-crafted humor. Plus, you know a piece is really working when you can seamlessly work in the phrase “blazing that sticky icky” by the second paragraph.
Missing Woman Found at Bottom of Tote Bag by Sarah Feliciano (The Hard Times) This is a really fun and silly premise, but what sells this one is how Sarah explores, including details about plastic bag hoarding and some great heightening with a junior soccer team and IKEA bags.
I Suppose You're All Wondering Why I've Gathered You Here by David Guzman (Points in Case) A very fun play on this trope, and we love the structure. David resets each beat with the same sort of phrase, always tweaked a bit for variety. It also occurs to us that this title is the implied subtitle for every newsletter, including ours.
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An Old Favorite
Everything We Currently Know About Birds by Steve Etheridge (McSweeney’s) One of our favorite parts of the holiday season is the free time it allows to take walks outside -- better learn about birds beforehand. This piece is a great list of jokes, but what really clinches it is the confident but dumb title. It's always a fun choice to have your character make a big claim: not only does it make for a clear POV, but the justification and exploration is more fun when the reader is curious to see how the big claim is going to be backed up.
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.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Luke’s got an Intro to Short Humor Writing Workshop starting on January 4th! (He’s also got a bunch of advanced workshops starting in January as well.) Get a jump on those new year’s writing resolutions by learning the essentials of short humor and writing a draft of your very own piece in a supportive environment.
Points In Case, where James is the managing editor, is publishing a People’s Favorite List this year, where readers can vote for the 2024 PIC pieces they liked best! James and Court will be tallying the votes and highlighting some of the winningest ones, along with some comments from readers, so be sure to vote before polls close on December 10th!
And see you at Peculier next Wednesday!
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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