Humor can single-handedly salvage a manuscript from the slush pile. There will always be an insatiable demand for it, regardless of larger literary trends. This is because humor is not confined to any specific genre; even horror and tragedy can be enriched with specks of well-placed humor by a dexterous writer. At the heart of humor is irony, the upsetting of expectations in a clever manner. On January 11th, Stanford Professor Ed Porter will guide us through five essentials to writing funny.
Professor Porter teaches a humor class at Stanford called “I Bet You Think You’re Funny.” He will talk about some of the theories of humor that have evolved over the ages, illustrate them with examples from contemporary fiction and nonfiction, and offer some exercises and principles that we can apply in our own writing. He will also talk about the ethics of humor, and some of the various ends humor seems to serve within the larger context of literature and culture.
Professor Porter’s writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, Colorado Review, Catamaran, Barrelhouse, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere. A native of New York City, he earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD from the University of Houston, and has been awarded fellowships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the MacDowell Colony, and Stanford University, where he was recently a Stegner Fellow. He lives in Oakland.
When: Monday, January 11 at 7pm
Where: Zoom Online Platform (details forthcoming over email – Join the Club here)