For May 20-26, 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. Gonna have to keep the intro short this week! We keep spilling coffee on ourselves and gotta go clean it up—ah, dang we just did it again!

What We Enjoyed This Week

I’ll Take This Costco Sample, but Only So I Can Make an Informed Purchasing Decision by Tyler Gooch (McSweeney’s) A great evocation of the many layers of posturing and deceit that lie beneath this seemingly routine and innocuous social interaction. Luke wants to call out that this piece particularly resonated with him as someone for whom taking a free food sample can often be a surprisingly (needlessly?) fraught experience.

The Spammer Becomes the Spammee by Teddy Wayne (Air Mail) You might know Teddy as a novelist, but he’s also a great short humor writer, and if you haven’t read any of his McSweeney’s work, you should absolutely check it out. His humor writing chops are very much on display here in his exchanges with this would-be scammer—we love to see this skill set applied in a very concrete way to the cause of justice.

Fenway Park’s Lobstah Poutine by Kristen Mulrooney (McSweeney’s) This piece delivers great descriptions of the Lobstah Poutine, sharp explanations of the broader cultural context around this dish, and by the end also becomes a surprisingly poignant evocation of baseball fandom. Oh and it’s also very funny. No easy feat to do all that in under 750 words!

-- ADS --

---

Trying to structure a long-term creative project around the dreaded day job? Register now for DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB, a two-hour writing workshop from humor writer, author, and day job-haver Lillian Stone. You'll leave with a practical framework for protecting and advancing your creative work—even when life refuses to cooperate. Class is in session June 6!

---

Maeve Dunigan's 'Read This To Look Cool,' a humorous essay collection that Stylist magazine calls "a bible for overthinkers," is OUT NOW wherever books are sold! Both cringe-inducing and uproarious, 'Read This To Look Cool' is a deeply relatable meditation on the absurdity inherent in the constant performance of ourselves, offering a fresh perspective on self-love and the true meaning of cool. It’s a book that says “I see you” and also “Don’t look at me, though, my hair is doing something weird.”

Order here or from your local bookstore!

---

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

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 #130.

Shhh! Quiet In The Library, The Books Are Sleeping by Libby Marshall (Slackjaw) What a silly idea--and we mean that in the best way possible. Sometimes, the most fun pieces take a goofball premise and just go with it, treating it as super-logical. For writers stuck with a blank page, try this format out. It often leads to fantastic results.

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

There’s still time to join Luke’s advanced short humor writing workshop starting next Wednesday (6/3) and his single-session workshop on how to give and get great feedback on your writing on Thursday night (6/4)!

And on June 3rd, James is going to be speaking about one of his favorite books, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, for a literary salon/book club run by Cree Myles. It looks to be only on Discord for Cree’s patreon subscribers — sign up if you’re interested!