The Writing University's Eleventh Hour podcast features recordings of illuminative craft talks from the renown writers, novelists, poets, essayists who present at the Eleventh Hour Lecture Series during the University of Iowa's Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Each week we release a tailored craft talk from the series, focusing on a wide range of topics such as Transforming Life into Writing, Humor Writing, The Music of Language and so many more.
Episode 115: The Art of Humor Writing
In this episode, The Art of Humor Writing, Lyz Lenz discusses memoirs and essays written about events that are still unfolding.
Chiaroscuro, in art, is a technique that uses bold contrasts of light and dark in painting to create vivid scenes and evoke emotion. It renders images almost three-dimensional. In writing, the bold use of light and dark has a similar effect. The balance of the serious with the humorous allows readers the chance to enter a story more fully, to laugh and cry, and connect with writing in a way that writing straight serious prose or simply humorous doesn't allow. This Eleventh Hour talk will look at examples from writing and art that perfectly balance the dark with the light to create hilarious and heart-rending work on the page.
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