Writing Humor
Sundays: July 13 - August 10
12 - 2 p.m. EST
Led by GREG MARSHALL
with guest authors Parini Shroff, Sloane Crosley, Ben Philippe, & Curtis Sittenfeld
$400
Please register with the email to which you’d like to receive class correspondence and readings.
Can humor be taught? Of course not. It doesn’t need to be. Humor is innate—wired into our earliest interactions and responses. Setups and punchlines. Plot. Pacing. Voice. An awareness of the physical body on the page. All of these can be strategically deployed to surprise, delight, and even illuminate. Maybe humor can’t be taught—but it can absolutely be unlocked.
This five-session Masters’ Series course, led by memoirist and humor writer Greg Marshall, approaches humor not as a trifle but a tool, a craft that can enrich and enliven the stories we’re most desperate, and even most scared, to tell. Students will absorb tools to punch up their writing—whether that means swapping a too-sincere sentence for something strange and delightful, or adjusting tone to land a joke just right.
Intimate conversations with four side-splitting humor writers—Parini Shroff, Sloane Crosley, Ben Philippe, and Curtis Sittenfeld—will help students gain a keener understanding of how exactly humor works. After close readings of the works of these audacious, hilarious writers, students will get to converse with them about the burning questions at the heart of humor writing: How do we bring to light original stories that blast through shame, resist tidy morals, and sidestep cliché? How can we use humor not to cover pain but to cut through it? All in service of the most vexing (and rewarding) question of all: Is this funny?
This course is for any writer who’s ever wished they were funnier on the page, and wants to drill down on how exactly to pull that off. Because ultimately, humor isn’t about being clever. It’s about seeing clearly, breaking form, and reaching for connection.
Students can expect to:
Gain concrete techniques for crafting humor on the page—through plot, pacing, voice, and the element of surprise.
Apply humor as a tool to deepen emotional impact, rather than deflect it, in personal and narrative writing.
Generate original, risk-taking work that breaks through shame, dodges cliché, and embraces the absurd.
Engage with a wide range of contemporary writers who use humor to illuminate truth, challenge conventions, and delight readers.
About the Instructors
Greg Marshall
Parini Shroff
Sloane Crosley
Ben Philippe
Curtis Sittenfeld
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Greg Marshall grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Prose, Marshall is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and the Medill School of Journalism. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays and been supported by MacDowell and the Corporation of Yaddo. Marshall's memoir, Leg, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Randy Shilts Award.
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Parini Shroff received her B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and her J.D. for Loyola Law School. She also studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing from the New Writers Project. Her debut novel, The Bandit Queens, is a national bestseller that was longlisted for the Women's Prize in Fiction, as well as an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). She is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp, both of which she has adapted for film. She has been featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best American Travel Writing, and Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay. She has been a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Independent, Departures, Black Book, and The New York Observer. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, her work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Vogue, and The Guardian.
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Ben Philippe is an author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, was named one of ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults in 2020 and won the William C. Morris Award. His memoir Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend was named one of Canada’s best nonfiction books by CBC, and his work on Only Murders in the Building was nominated for Writers Guild of America Awards for Television for both New Series and Comedy Series. His media/culture coverage has appeared in Vanity Fair, Observer, The A.V. Club, The Guardian, Playboy, and Thrillist, and his short stories have appeared in Five Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Bookanista, and elsewhere.
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Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, Rodham, and Romantic Comedy, which was picked for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club, as was her first story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into 30 languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Esquire, and in the Best American Short Stories anthology, of which she was the 2020 guest editor. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Slate, and on This American Life.
Class Schedule
We'll be joined by guest authors Sloane Crosley on July 13; Curtis Sittenfeld on July 20; Ben Philippe on July 27; and Parini Shroff on August 3.
Details
This course will take place on Zoom on Sundays July 13 - August 10 from 12 - 2 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterward.
There is a 10% cancellation fee if you cancel your enrollment more than 1 week before the start of the course. No refund will be given if cancelling within less than a week of the course start date (or after the course has begun).
Please email courses@offassignment.com with any questions.
FAQs →
Financial Aid
The full price for this course is $400; a limited number of scholarships are available. Please fill out this form by June 20, and we’ll get back to you within a week.
Off Assignment’s Masters’ Series courses are unique five-session courses that delve deep into a specific writing topic by harnessing the expertise and craft tactics of a renowned writer in a particular niche, plus four celebrated authors. Participating writers gain a wealth of advanced techniques while benefiting from a cohesive community of disciplined writers.