A Panel Presentation
ALL LEVELS
Co-presented by The Portland Maine Comedy Festival and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, this panel discussion on comic writing will cover all things humor, ranging from how to craft a joke and write a joke well, to what makes things humorous and why, to how to weave humor into more serious writing. Panelists will discuss how effective humor can be in making a point in novels, short stories, essays, and more.
Featuring Sarah Hutto, Shana Genre, Brock Clarke, Rodney Norman and special guests. Free to members of the MWPA and festival comics. The panel will conclude with a Q&A session and a happy hour!
Be sure to check out some of the incredible comedy shows over the weekend as well! Details at portlandmainecomedy.com
+ PLEASE NOTE This presentation and happy hour will take place in Masterson Hall, Room 113, at USM in Portland.
Brock Clarke is the author of nine books--most recently the novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? and the essay collection I, Grape; or The Case for Fiction. Clarke’s individual stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, Southern Review, The Believer, Ninth Letter, and the New England Review, and have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He lives in Portland, Maine, and is the A. LeRoy Greason Chair of English and Creative Writing at Bowdoin College.
Shana Genre’s humor writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Museum of Americana, The Portland Phoenix, P.S. I Love You, The Bigger Picture, The Belladonna Comedy, Slackjaw, The Second City, Points in Case, and The Haven. She was the 2021 recipient of the Dibner Memorial Fellowship and is currently working on a collection of humorous personal essays called Pedaling Into Oblivion.
Sarah Hutto is a writer with a heart of gold and irritable bowels who lives in Maine. She has written for The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Washington Post, and Reductress.
If you have been on social media you have seen his face. His videos have garnered millions of views worldwide and his style (or lack thereof) is catching on. Honest and unassuming, his humor will catch you off guard and leave you laughing days later. Rodney Norman is more than an entertainer, he is an experience.
REGISTRATION
This talk is free for MWPA members and comedy festival attendees.