A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #418
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For November 5-11, 2025
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. Lately, a lot of readers have been writing in to tell us about a problem that they’ve been having: They’re always getting the recent TV shows “Mare of Easttown” and “Mayor of Kingstown” confused. To help, we’ve come up with this handy rhyme: “If the town be East, with Winslet you’ll feast. If the town be Kings, then Renner it brings.” Hope that helps!
What We Enjoyed This Week
I’m Hosting a Chic Party in a Comedy Movie and NOBODY WILL END UP IN THAT POOL by Carly Silverman (Points in Case) So much of the fun of this piece comes from the way that Carly lets the readers connect the dots themselves. She sets up all the different elements of this party and leaves it to us to imagine, in a very satisfying way, what it will be like when all hell eventually breaks loose. “On the docket for this soiree? Polite conversation, smiling, inoffensive jokes, tittering, sipping martinis, light sneering, watch checking, soft applause for a titillating announcement, and staying dry.”
Please Consider My Mom, Kathy, for the Next Golden Bachelorette by Emily Berge (McSweeney’s) This is a really fun character piece, packed with tons of great details about Kathy—but we particularly love Emily’s choice to embed all those details in a letter to the producers of the Golden Bachelorette. Sometimes when you’re trying to write a piece based on grounded, realistic, (possibly) true-to-life details and observations, you run the risk of it starting to feel like a personal essay, particularly if you’re writing about, say, a family member. You often need some extra element to push your piece in a more premise-y, short humor-y direction, which is what precisely what the framing of this piece does. (That being said, we should be clear, we don’t know how many of the details of this piece are true vs. invented!)
Little Caesars’ Crazy Puffs by Fletcher Michael (McSweeney’s) Speaking of how to blend reality into something more short humor-y, check out how Fletcher cleverly uses a review of a real food product as a jumping-off point for an extremely funny character piece. “But what can I do? Not put hot slices of pizza into my pockets? Just hold it in my hands? I’m a busy guy. How am I supposed to complete all of my daily errands if I have to hold hot slices of pizza all day long?” This also features a sterling example of what we like to call a “Here we go again” ending.
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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 #84.
The Oral History of this Oral History by Kevin Seccia (McSweeney's)
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing: The thing you've got to understand is, when we read The Oral History of this Oral History, we were blown away. We had never seen anything like it before. No one was doing that! It was an entirely new format, which, frankly, is what the humor writing world was in need of. We were so impressed by not just how funny it was, but how technically difficult it was to pull off. Kevin read this at our show and absolutely killed.
James: I remember that!
Brian: So funny!
Luke: He was great!
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing: Yeah, what they said. Anyway, it's a great piece. Give it a read.
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 Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
James embarked on a self-imposed project to read as much fiction by former NYC mayors as possible. For Lit Hub, he wrote about this NYC Mayor Fiction Canon and pitched some ideas for a crime thriller by soon-to-be-ex-mayor Eric Adams.
Nothing else from us this week! Too busy trying to come up with more rhymes to help people remember which TV shows are which.
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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