Hanging Off the TV Cliff
At the New York Times Sunday Review, Rumpus Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist asks whether television shows have become reliant on cliffhangers as a way to retain viewership season over season.
...morePosts Tagged: elissa bassist
The Belladonna Variety Hour (and a Half)
What are you doing this Saturday at 8 p.m.? The Belladonna—a new comedy and satire site by women, for everyone—is going analog at the PIT Loft in NYC with standup, sketches, and readings.
Hosted by Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist, the show’s lineup includes The Belladona’s co-founders: Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor, and Carrie Wittmer.
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Funny Women #152: Features of the Groundbreaking American Writers Museum
We’ll be open as long as the National Endowment for the Arts is. ...more
That’s What She Said
Have you submitted a piece to “Funny Women” and it wasn’t quite the right fit for the column? Have you always wanted to write for “Funny Women” or Daily Shouts or McSweeney’s Internet Tendency? Our very own Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist is teaching another two-day workshop at Catapult, so if you missed out in the fall, now is your chance to learn from the best!
...moreThe Way Out Is Through
At Dame Magazine, Rumpus Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist writes with her inimitable deadpan humor and clarity on finding solace in the general population’s depression following the recent election’s alarming results. As a person who lives with clinical depression, Bassist writes that:
...moreThe way out of depression is through.
Where We Go from Here
Warrior up! Begin with small actions, like donating or volunteering, if you're able. ...more
Off the Mainstream Map
For Bitch Media, Rumpus Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist interviews writer-actress Roberta Colindrez on her recent roles in Amazon’s adaptation of Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick and the Broadway adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, two powerful narratives centered on women.
...moreCall for Submissions: Emrys Journal
“Funny Women” submissions don’t read themselves. Most of the time Assistant Regional Funny Woman Katie Burgess reads them (she wrote the infinitely funny “How to Read a Poem,” anthologized in Oxford University Press’s Humor: A Reader for Writers, and has since gone on to read slush).
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FUNNY WOMEN #143: Feminism, the Quiz
How often do you dissemble power structures with equal-opportunity daredevildom? ...more
Catapulting Humor into Your Writing
Following the recent announcement of its merger with Counterpoint Press, Catapult is starting a new season of writing workshops!
And, our own Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist is among the featured instructors, teaching a two-day masterclass in humor writing, during which “each student will brainstorm, outline, write, and workshop a successful shortish parody/satire or die trying.” The course begins on September 24—head over to Catapult’s website for further info and to sign up!
...moreTalking Passover
Time to gather for Seder: over at McSweeney’s, Rumpus Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist has a handy guide (or a cautionary tale) of conversation topics to get through Passover’s rituals.
...moreFunny Women
Love our “Funny Women“ column as much as we do? Find out who “Funny Women” editor Elissa Bassist thinks is hilarious, courtesy of Vela Magazine.
...moreNeed a new dating app?
Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist has a very funny piece over at The New Yorker about the dating apps of 2014. This one sounds good:
...moreUnhinged
Description: Disconnect from old connections. Designed for the dumped, the living alone, and the emotionally delayed.
Wanna Go To A Pity Party?
Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist is having a pity party and you’re invited. Check you coats and your positive attitude at the door and enjoy…or you know… don’t.
...more“I wrote down a few affirmations, discovered peace and serenity and my upper-arm obesity, but then I accidentally killed my succulent plant and Justin Bieber isn’t who I thought he was, so I was like, you know what?
Notable NYC: 11/30–12/6
Saturday 11/30: Indies First is a nationwide celebration of independent bookstores launched by author Sherman Alexie to support small businesses. Independent bookstores around New York City invited some of their favorite authors for appearances:
John Bemelmans Marciano, Emma Straub, Tim O’Mara, Jami Attenberg, Myke Cole, Amy Shearn, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Brandan Jay Sullivan, and Sarah McCarry will be at WORD Brooklyn, 11 a.m.
...more“This Other Reality Exists”
Our girl Elissa Bassist lays some hella smart analysis on Orange is the New Black for Medium:
...moreTo see what’s been missing in popular culture is to see how comprehensive and refined the brainwashing has become….the number/diversity of women on-screen, the depth/complexity of their stories, the scope/span of their humanity—is one antidote to objectification.
FUNNY WOMEN #100: Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel
A lot of women people (as opposed to men people, or just “people”) are upset that Wikipedia editors have created a subcategory for "American Women Novelists.” But I’m not. ...more
Rumpus Women Should Be Writing for Harper’s!
The disparity of women writers in the publishing world has been an increasingly hot topic of late.
Flavorwire has compiled a list entitled “10 Women Who Should be Writing for ‘Harper’s,” and we’re excited that three of the women are our own essays editor Roxane Gay, Dear Sugar’s Cheryl Strayed, and Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist!
...moreBooks Elissa Bassist Thinks You Should Read
The Equals Record asks Funny Women editor (and writer/motherfucker) Elissa Bassist what she’s reading offline.
She responds with a whole shelf’s worth of books, from David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest to fellow funny woman Tina Fey’s autobiographical comedy Bossypants.
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THE NEXT LETTER IN THE MAIL: Elissa Bassist
The next Letter in the Mail, going out this Friday, is from Elissa Bassist.
Elissa Bassist is the editor of our Funny Women column. Her writing has appeared here on The Rumpus, in The New York Times, NYMag.com, The Paris Review Daily, The Daily Beast, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Salon, Creative Nonfiction, and most recently in Get Out of My Crotch, a collection of twenty-one writers responding to America’s war on women’s rights and reproductive health.
...moreThe Art of Motherfuckertude
We all have these feelings inside us—anxiety, fear, trepidation, hope, desire—and our every effort becomes getting these things out. Writing that letter to you and publishing it was how I felt connected and compassionate.
Two and a half years ago, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist wrote a letter seeking advice from our Sugar.
...moreChecking the Box
Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist writes for NY Mag about her experience with sexual violence, and the difficulty of finding language — as an individual and as a culture — to conceive of and communicate sexual trauma both in the moment and after the fact.
...moreJoke or Invitation?
In a thought-provoking Daily Beast essay about Daniel Tosh’s “rape joke” at the Laugh Factory, Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist clarifies the distinction between using humor “to cope or to point out the absurdity of a situation” and making a joke to humiliate, threaten, or assert power over another person.
...more“The Never-to-Be Bride”
Rumpus Funny Women editor Elissa Bassist rocks the New York Times Modern Love column.
“That online conversation was our last. Once he signed off, he was gone for good. At that moment, those children we had planned died, or were never born, or could have been born if things had gone differently.
...moreNotes from Jeanette Winterson’s Reading at McNally Jackson
Jeanette Winterson has the best-named memoir: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She spoke about the story behind the title during her reading at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC:
...moreWhen Jeanette W. was fifteen, she fell in love with another girl and couldn’t hide it.
Write Like a Motherfucker (on Facebook)
Are you trying to write today but feeling distracted/unmotivated/lonely? If so, perfect. We’re taking “Write Like a Motherfucker,” Dear Sugar’s #48 column one step beyond…
...moreFUNNY WOMEN #61: My Imaginary Wet Hot American Summer
Even though I’m Jewish, I never went to summer camp.
Love for Feministing
Feministing, the esteemed online feminist community, highlighted our very own Elissa Bassist’s interview with sex-positive feminist Susie Bright (which is still very smart and very funny, if you haven’t dabbled yet).
Thanks for the shout-out, Feministing. The love is mutual!
...moreMy Interview with Susie Bright, Sex-Positive Feminist
Susie Bright, sex-positive feminist, writer, revolutionary, and my first tongue-kiss with a woman recently released her memoir Big Sex Little Death.
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Unsolicited Writing Advice You Want
Some advice for writers from our own Elissa Bassist:
[Some of this is stolen. But I won’t tell you what because I want to impress you.] ...more