A Writer Walks Into a Bar: The Nuts and Bolts of Writing Humor with Kristen Arnett— October 26

What makes people laugh? How many ways can you tell a joke and still glean something interesting from the premise? Here's a fresh look at everything you need to know about unpacking - and subsequently repackaging - the way comedy sits inside of fiction and non-fiction.

In this generative two-hour workshop, we'll specifically take a look at repetition, self-deprecating humor, copycatting, absurdism, and a slew of other techniques and processes that help us understand why the hell something is funny. 

Attendees will spend time in this session discussing the craft of humor in narrative works, essays, and pop culture/media. This will be a collaborative process; one that allows us to consider (and reconsider) how authors work comedic effect into their creative work. You will generate work in-session and take home prompts when the workshop is complete.

What you will learn

• To hone the craft of writing humor

• To hone the craft of reading humor

• To explore the nuances and intersections of how comedy works in various types of creative writing and pop culture/media

Workshop takeaways

Students will leave with generated work, further reading, further writing prompts, and a better sense of how to read comedy as well as how to effectively embed humor into their own work.

Additional info

If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.

About the Instructor

Kristen Arnett is the queer Floridian author of the novels STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE (Riverhead Books, 2025) which was longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize, With Teeth (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction, and the New York Times bestselling debut Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Studios of Key West, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She runs the substack “Dad Lessons.” Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her upcoming short fiction collection, Party at the End of the World, will be published by Riverhead Books. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.