Funny Favorites from Andy Borowitz

ACTORS & ARTISTS

Andy Borowitz is a New York Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. In 2001, he created The Borowitz Report, a satirical news column that has millions of readers around the world, for which he won the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. The Borowitz Report was acquired by The New Yorker in 2012. He created the classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, winning the NAACP Image Award. Additional Hollywood credits include the Oscar-nominated film Pleasantville. He edited The 50 Funniest American Writers, which became the first title in the history of the Library of America to make the New York Times best-seller list, and is the author of a memoir, An Unexpected Twist, a number-one bestseller. As a comedian, Borowitz has performed sold-out shows around the world and has made countless television and radio appearances, on National Public Radio, VH1, and Comedy Central, among other places. His solo comedy show, Make America Not Embarrassing Again, began touring the U.S. in 2018.

Sloane Crosley is the author of the bestselling essay collections Look Alive Out There and I Was Told There’d Be Cake, both finalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, How Did You Get This Number, as well as The New York Times bestselling novel The Clasp. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Elle, GQ, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The Believer, Vice, McSweeney’s, and New York Magazine, among others, as well as on National Public Radio. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.

Ian Frazier is a humorist and staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of the humor collections Coyote vs. Acme and Lamentations of the Father, both winners of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Additional works of fiction and nonfiction include Dating Your Mom, On the Rez, The Fish’s Eye, Gone to New York, Travels in Siberia, Humor Me, and most recently, Hogs Wild. Frazier is the recipient of the 1989 Whiting Award for Nonfiction.

Judith Ivey is a two-time Tony Award winner for her roles in Steaming and Hurlyburly, and an Obie Award winner for The Moonshot Tape. Additional theater credits include The Heiress, The Audience, and most recently, Greater Clements at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, in addition to numerous off-Broadway and regional directing credits. A member of the Texas Film Hall of Fame, her film and television career includes roles in Brighton Beach Memoirs, Down Home, Designing Women, The Devil’s Advocate, What the Deaf Man Heard, for which she earned an Emmy nomination, Will & Grace, What Alice Found, The Flags of Our Fathers, Nurse Jackie, Big Love, White Collar, and New Amsterdam.

Molly Ivins (1944 - 2007) was a newspaper columnist, author, political commentator, and humorist who began her career in journalism in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. In 1976, Ivins joined The New York Times as a political reporter. Her column was syndicated in more than three hundred newspapers, and she was a regular contributor to Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Harper’s, among other publications. Her first book, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list, and her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush — Shrub, Bushwhacked, and Who Let the Dogs In? — were national bestsellers. A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ivins claimed that her two greatest honors were that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M. She is the subject of the 2019 documentary Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins.

Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967) sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914 and began working as an editor at Vogue in 1916. She eventually became the theater critic at Vanity Fair, where she met the writers with whom she would form the Algonquin Round Table. Her first book of poems, Enough Rope, was published in 1926 and was a bestseller. She was on the founding editorial board of The New Yorker for its 1925 debut, and she wrote for the magazine until 1957. Paker is the author of numerous collections of poems and stories, including Sunset Gun, Death and Taxes, and Laments for the Living.

Parker Posey has appeared in many independent films, including Broken English, Price Check, Party Girl, The House of Yes, Fay Grimm, Clockwatchers, and Columbus. Most people know her from Christopher Guest movies such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. She’s done a few Hollywood movies like Superman Returns, Blade: Trinity, and Josie and the Pussycats. Her first book, You’re on an Airplane, became a national bestseller. Currently, you can see her in the reboot of Lost in Space on Netflix and hear her on Dick Wolf’s podcast Hunted. Posey is very excited to appear in the forthcoming film The Matrix 4.

Isaiah Sheffer (1935 - 2012) was a writer, director, cultural entrepreneur, and impresario. He was co-founder of Symphony Space in New York City, served as the organization’s Artistic Director until 2010 and Founding Artistic Director thereafter, and was widely known as the host of Selected Shorts. In addition, he was the creator of Wall to Wall and Bloomsday on Broadway, as well as the co-creator of The Thalia Follies political cabaret.

Kirsten Vangsness is best known as Penelope Garcia on the CBS drama Criminal Minds; however, she can be found in other places, including a few podcasts (Selected Shorts and Voyage to the Stars), the film noir spoof Kill Me Deadly, and Curtains, the animated short she created, which was released in 2020. She was nominated for Playwright of the Year by LA Weekly and is a company member of Hollywood's Theater of NOTE. Vangsness recently returned from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where two of her plays, Mess and Cleo, Theo and Wu, were performed at Assembly Rooms. In her spare time, Vangsness buses tables at the Blinking Owl Distillery, which she co-owns, in Santa Ana.