For April 1-7, 2026

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. We’re excited to announce that our next Hangout of Humorous Writing will be Tuesday, April 21st at 6PM at Peculier Pub in New York City! Stop by to meet and say hi to some of your fellow humor writers and fans of humor writing.

What We Enjoyed This Week

Our Mom-and-Pop Data Center by Jed Feiman and Nehemiah Markos (The New Yorker) Using a down-to-earth, folksy tone and vocabulary to describe something cutting edge and high-tech is a classic comedic juxtaposition. Lots of credit to Jed and Nehemiah for finding a nicely specific and wacky angle for tackling this topical subject matter.

Our Recent Corporate Bankruptcy Explained by the Notes I, the CEO, Left Around the Break Room Refrigerator by Kyle Andrew Johnson (Points in Case) This piece’s form—a description of each note followed by the text on the note—is a really clever, original way to tell the very funny story of a CEO’s descent into madness after the theft of his smoothie. Kyle also does a great job heightening and including lots of nice runners and callbacks.

Smoking Harvard by Gary Suarez (Bright Wall/Dark Room) Not a traditional humor piece, but a very witty appreciation of the 2001 film How High, and the broader film genre of stoner comedy. Gary strikes a nice tonal balance: His analysis is quite highbrow, but the language he uses is often tongue-in-cheek in a way that keeps the essay from ever feeling overly pretentious or too out-of-step with its very silly subjects. There are some great turns of phrase here, such as, “weed cute,” “couchlocked devotees,” and “respect-deprived stand-up Rodney Dangerfield.”

-- AD --

Heidi Lux is teaching Screenplay Structure Made Simple (and Fun!) on Saturday, April 25th through Writing Workshops! The class breaks down structure in a way that’s process focused, going over the purpose of each beat and how it relates to character arc, so that when you sit down to beat out your screenplay (or other three-act story - novels count, too!), you can think with it. Structure is a tool, not a rigid formula! You can find out more info here.

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An Old Favorite

The Economic Value of This Article Is Dependent on Peri Gilpin’s Retweeting It by Jonathan Zeller (The New Yorker) Jonathan strikes an impressive balance with the meta, self-reflexive elements of this piece. They’re essential to his premise, but they aren’t the only things driving the humor. It’s a great satire of articles cynically designed to do well on social-media, and what makes it particularly fun is not just how calculating the narrator is, but how up front and honest they are about their motivations:

“Why choose to lobby for a retweet from Peri Gilpin and not, say, Beyoncé? As I write this, Beyoncé has 15.7 million Twitter followers. But there is no way she’s going to share something I write. There’s nothing for her to gain by doing so. Beyoncé, if you want to prove me wrong, please go ahead. I’d welcome your support. It might be a reach for Peri Gilpin to retweet this story, but it’s at least plausible.”

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 has been deep in prep for a new bracket for Lit Hub that's going to be kicking off on Monday -- keep an eye on the site and get your votin' fingers ready!

Just one more reminder, if you skimmed the intro, about our next Hangout of Humorous Writing. Hope to see you on Tuesday, April 21st at 6PM at Peculier Pub!