As a writer, I can’t help but admire what a good stand-up comedy set can conjure—that spark of the mundane, of a single life thrust through the absurdity of living. Sprawled out in the dark beneath our clunker TV, I used to understand the late-night Comedy Jam performers of my youth as magicians, as people capable of transforming a room with the well-timed punctuation of their bodies.
Now, as a poet seeking out the balance between humor and grief in my own work, I understand stand-up comedy as a model for literary writing, one that reminds us of the fine line between laughter and mourning: Shared joy, as well as grief, can heal us, can see us through.
A good stand-up set means situating your audience early. If you do so, your audience will journey with you anywhere, will give you permission to wander and take them down dark alleys, the kind that seem like they might dead-end until you take them further. The further we journey, the more satisfying the destination, the punchline, the gift we’ve earned to look back, see how far we’ve come and wonder, brazenly, Where next?
—Diamond Forde, author of The Book of Alice (Scribner, 2026)