Fast Funny Women

FAST FUNNY WOMEN is a broad collection: 75 women writers, ages 20 to 89, were invited by editor Gina Barreca to make a party out of their life’s most unnerving, challenging, illuminating, desperate, and hilarious moments.

Political campaigners, devoted teachers, lousy daughters, good mothers, would-be nuns, admired sportswriters, grad-school-wanna-bes, revenge-driven sisters, frustrated roommates, body-fluid-sorting professionals, lace-loving fashion mavens, intrepid daters, hungry lovers, justice-seeking nasty-women, ACE wedding celebrants, trapped wives, and women with all kinds of ammunition tell their stories—and their stories are all under 750 words.

You know many of these brilliant women, but you’ve never heard them like this: with new works commissioned for the book from NYT Bestseller and member of the American Academy of Poets, Marge Piercy, Pulitzer-Prize winner Jane Smiley, NYT bestseller graphic artist Mimi Pond, New Yorker staff cartoonist Liza Donnelly, Commander of the British Empire Fay Weldon, bestselling author of Love, Loss, and What I Wore Ilene Beckerman, Sylvia creator Nicole Hollander, stand-up comics Lisa Landry and Leighann Lord, filmmakers Ferne Pearlstein and Pamela Katz, you’ll also find Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh, Dawn Lundy Martin—who was one of Barreca’s first students at UCONN 33 years ago— Judge Judy Sheindlin, who was Barreca’s next-door-neighbor in Brooklyn New York—and you’ll read dozens of other emerging writers who will capture your imagination and your heart. They’ll make you think and laugh, because when women write humor, both happen at the same time.

Other contributors: Nicole Hollander, Jane Smiley, Fay Weldon, Judge Judy Sheindlin, Marge Piercy

978-1-949116-20-5 eBook