#16: Emily Flake

Someone You Might Like Who Helps Other People You Might Like

Update: November 3, 2023

The amazing

Emily Flake

has a new release from Andrews McMeel Publishing: It’s probably the best tool I’ve seen for generating joke ideas for New Yorker cartoons (especially when, like me, your brain is basically a potato.)

Not only is it a helpful guide on the creative process of writing jokes, but it is a physical, practical, tangible thing you can hold in your hand that exists in time and space. That very notion makes a big difference from, say, an un-named machine-learning generator doing the (terrible) work of figuring out funny premises…

Who is Emily? Welp, this post below will fill you in. Or you could just get the thing and flip open the inside of the box!

If you enjoy my work, there’s a hefty chance you might like the people I enjoy, too. Each week, I share a new person who tickles my fancy. This week’s person is…

Emily Flake

I mentioned above that Emily is the creator of Nell’s Bells, but what I didn’t mention is that she is also the generous mind behind St. Nell’s humor writing residency in Williamsport!

The residency is open to women+, non-binary folks, and other people of marginalized genders working in any humor-related field*. Besides the residency, they also offer Zoom classes led by working (and awesome!) humor professionals

*As far as “humor-related”, they’re using a broad (heh) definition: Short satire pieces, stand-up routines, screenplays, pilot scripts, novels, comics, rock operas, and engraved stelae. As long as its primary genre is humorous, it’s fair game.

I’ve done comedy shows with Emily, I’ve seen her do great New Yorker cartoons, and I’ve seen how well she can navigate a turnpike. It really is a sight to behold. Some day I’ll write up the story of coming back from a gig where I had my head down in the back seat looking at my phone and got carsick… out the window. On a highway.

Anyway! Aherm...

Check out her upcoming release (above) here, and see more of her work here.