Writing Is Hard
First, watch this: Hamlet 2 preview (pay special attention around the 49-second mark). Steve Coogan, playing Dana Marschz, beautifully captures the life of a writer in the overshadowed and under-acclaimed…
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Elissa Bassist
115 posts
Elissa Bassist edits the Funny Women column and teaches humor writing. Her next class is "How to Write a Comedic Memoir" on 3/30. She wrote Hysterical, a semi-finalist for The Thurber Prize for American humor, and is co-writing Inside Jokes: A Comedy and Creativity Guide for All Writers with Caitlin Kunkel (out in 2026). Her newsletter is Tragedy Plus Time.
Funny Women Submission Guidelines
Dear Writers, So, you’ve decided you’re a woman or gender non-conforming writer and would like to submit to Funny Women. Out of all decisions, this is the best one you…
Funny Women
I have been thinking a lot about funny women. I’m going to tell you what’s good before I tell you what’s very, very bad.
The Monthly Rumpus
Were you at August’s Monthly Rumpus? Look at how much fun you had here. Were you not at August’s Monthly Rumpus? Look at a projection of how much fun you could…
Roald Dahl, Man of Letters
I have read Kafka’s letters and Flaubert’s letters and Jane Austen’s letters. These authors are a part of my “adult” life. But I haven’t read the letters of authors who…
Great Authors’ Syllabi
When I think about good books, I think about this: -Never read a bad book/book you don’t like 50 pages in; it’s wasteful. -You will die someday; read accordingly. -Reading…
Edith Wharton’s Lost Letters
In the upcoming New Yorker, Rebecca Mead writes about Edith Wharton’s letters to her governess, Anna Bahlmann. “Wharton had requested that her letters be destroyed, but Bahlmann’s family ignored her…
The Triumph of Woman
In “The Death of Macho,” Reihan Salam says “the era of male dominance is coming to an end.” Finally!
“Reading That’s Bad for You,” or: Lessons in Publishing
Ron Charles of the Washington Post reports on Electric Literature, a new bi-monthly magazine that is making lit. mags differently. I’ve noted five lessons about publishing via Electric Literature’s watershed…
The Women of McSweeneys.net
“Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women?” inquired Christopher Hitchens in “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” Vanity Fair, January 2007. That’s a good question. And…
Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer is a Web site presenting the world with the following challenge/life-better-maker: “Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷…
An Old Review of Kafka’s Love Letters
“Freely pouring his emotions into the letters, Kafka is, by turns, passionate [‘I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong…