Saturday, May 2nd, 2026

Class will meet once via Zoom on Saturday, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PDT): 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM / Chicago (CDT): 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM / New York (EDT): 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM / London (BST): 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM / Berlin (CEST): 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Note: If you can't attend live, this class will be recorded. All enrolled students will receive a link to watch the recording, which will be available for 30 days.

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us.

Instructor Bio

Instructor Tom Ellison's humor and satire appear in The New Yorker and McSweeney's (where he authored two of the most-read pieces of 2025). He is the author of the masculinity satire MANTHOLOGY by Chud Buffly (as told to Tom Ellison), forthcoming from Quirk Books in 2026. He is also a climate policy wonk who writes regularly in foreign policy publications and is a recovering intelligence analyst.

Who is this class for?

This online humor writing workshop is for writers whose backgrounds are firmly planted in the serious and non-creative world—news reporting, policy analysis, law, academia, and similar fields. If you write humor or satire (or want to!) and are familiar with short humor like McSweeney's, The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, or Points in Case, this class is for you. No publication record or "level" is required, but students should be familiar with this type of writing and basic concepts like "heightening," "premise," etc. Open to all levels.

What to expect:

Are you interested in humor writing, but come from a background in the world of "serious" and non-creative writing (law, news, analysis, etc.)? Well, so is popular humorist Tom Ellison, who is a DC climate policy wonk by day and a former CIA analyst. And writing for McSweeney's and the President's Daily Brief have more in common than you might think. Though there are some differences (the latter is less likely to contain the phrase "peer review deez nuts").

Although many humor writers come from backgrounds in creative writing and performance, people with serious jobs are funny too! As a journalist, lawyer, or analyst, your writing background is more relevant than you might think. In this online humor writing class, you will explore the writing skills and principles you know how to use for insight, clarity, and persuasiveness, and learn how to harness them for comedy. Just as important, you will learn the places where your rigorous writing style may get in the way, and how to get more comfortable breaking those rules. A combination of lecture, student discussion, and hands-on exercises, the seminar will leave students better equipped to navigate between serious and comedic writing.

Take this course if you like nerding out about the principles, "rules," and formulas in writing, and you want to make your humor writing funnier and more publishable, and/or want to get better at switching between comedic writing and other professional writing.

What are the writing goals?

In this two-hour workshop, students will participate in interactive exercises and receive verbal feedback on their ideas and responses to instructor prompts. Students will examine short humor pieces from McSweeney's and The New Yorker as examples during exercises. While students will not generate a formal written piece for feedback, they will leave with key takeaways, best practices, and resources to apply these lessons to their own humor writing.

Readings

Students will use a few short McSweeney's and New Yorker pieces (under 800 words each) as examples and parts of exercises during the webinar.

COURSE OUTLINE

• Instructor Introduction and Course Overview (10 min)
• Serious People Can Be Funny Too (10 min)
• Student Introductions/Background Exercise (15 min, including exercise)
• "Serious Writing" and Humor: What Translates? (25 min, including exercise)
• Break (10 min)
• "Serious Writing" and Humor: What Gets in the Way? (25 min, including exercise)
• Key Takeaways, Best Practices, and Resources (20 min)
• Q&A (balance of time)

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• It can feel challenging or uncomfortable to do humor writing coming from a writing background that is "boring" or "serious" for a lot of internal/external reasons, but you'll learn not to let that stop you
• You can apply key concepts and skills from your law/analysis/journalism/science writing to humor writing (e.g., structure, speed, co-writing, precision of language, etc.)
• You'll learn which "serious writing" instincts to push back against or approach with caution (such as "Bottom Line Up Front," neutrality, and "Editor Brain")
• You'll leave with resources and best practices for navigating the shift between serious and comedic writing
• You'll gain confidence in translating your professional skills into publishable humor