See You in The Mitten!
Michigan is about to get a whole lot funnier...Traverse City Comedy Fest just announced full lineup for 2026
The 13-Year Intermission
Back in 2013, I performed at my final Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The reviews were rave. Naturally, my response to this unqualified success was to immediately stop doing comedy festivals entirely. It felt smart to quit while I was ahead and “leave them wanting more,” a strategy I have now committed to for thirteen years. (ill-advised.)
But the hiatus is over. The Traverse City Comedy Fest just announced its lineup, and I’ve been selected to perform this spring!
The organisers selected the 2026 roster from a pool of submissions representing 33 states and Canada, and somehow, I slipped through the net. The festival takes place April 16-18, and I’ll be joining a lineup that includes actual heavy hitters like Roy Wood Jr., Gary Gulman, and Sarah Sherman.
The lineup is intimidatingly good. Gary Gulman is headlining. I trudged through a blizzard in New York this time last year just to see his show Grandiloquent (you can read my review here), and it was worth the frostbite. Roy Wood Jr. is also on the bill, which is exciting because he was a guest on my podcast with Stand-Up Comedy For Introverts a while back, where he was hilariously sharp. You can listen to that episode here.
Traverse City is in the “pinky” of Michigan’s mitten, a place famous for tart cherries, large lakes, and winters that build character (frostbite). More importantly, it is the current habitat of my former podcast co-host, Devin Keast.
Longtime listeners will remember Devin from Move On Up, the podcast we retired years ago. We cut our teeth hosting a weekly open mic together in New York, walking onto the stage every week to the Curtis Mayfield anthem. Devin moved to Michigan a while back, and I assume he now subsists entirely on fudge and Great Lakes whitefish while wearing exclusively Carhartt. We haven’t shared a stage in a decade, and I am irrationally excited to head to the Midwest to see if our chemistry survived the distance.
A portion of the festival proceeds benefits the Women’s Resource Centre, a local nonprofit supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence. It’s a great cause, a great lineup, and a terrifyingly long-overdue return to the festival circuit.
‘til next time
your pal
Knock 'em dead. Tell them they're better looking than New Yorkers.
Traverse city is so fun!!! I had a film premiere there years ago and I literally became friends with the mayor