2012 Workshop
Want to relive the laughs and learning of the 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop? The audio recordings of the workshop or individual sessions are now available for sale.
The next Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop will be April 10-12, 2014, on the campus of the University of Dayton, Erma Bombeck’s alma mater. Registration is expected to open in December 2013.
The Bombeck Workshop is the only one in the country devoted to both humor and human interest writing. Through the workshop, the University of Dayton and the Bombeck family honor one of America’s most celebrated storytellers and humorists. Over the past decade, the workshop has attracted such household names as Dave Barry, Phil Donahue, Art Buchwald, Nancy Cartwright, Don Novello, Garrison Keillor, Gail Collins, Connie Schultz, Adriana Trigiani and Alan Zweibel.
The workshop typically begins on a Thursday evening and continues through Saturday evening, ending with an attendee stand-up show. It features more than two dozen professional humor and human interest writers on it faculty, offering sessions on the craft of writing, turning an interest into a profession, marketing, publishing and more. We also offer breakfast roundtables and plenty of other opportunities for comparing notes and networking. The atmosphere is very supportive to both new and established writers looking for the kind of inspiration Erma received from UD professor Brother Tom Price: “You can write!”
And you’re guaranteed to laugh. A lot.
The workshop draws approximately 350 writers from around the country and typically sells out very quickly, so don’t wait once registration opens.
The 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop featured an exciting line-up of keynote speakers with extensive experience in print, television, theater and film. The keynoters included:
• Alan Zweibel, winner of the Thurber Prize and an original Saturday Night Live writer.
• Gina Barreca, who has been called a “feminist maven” by Ms. Magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman.” by Dave Barry.
• Ilene Beckerman, who was nearly 60 when she began her writing career and whose book Love, Loss and What I Wore became an Off-Broadway hit.
• Connie Schultz, a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate and a regular essayist for Parade magazine. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
• Adriana Trigiani, whose bestselling Big Stone Gap launched her career as a novelist with sequels and a screenplay.
Read more about all of the workshop faculty and workshop sessions.
is the very model of a modern, middle-aged man — except that he’s now won four awards for humorous writing from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He laughs at the absurdities of life in his humor column for his hometown paper, The Stamford Advocate. His column is syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune and has run in newspapers across the country and around the world. A collection of his columns appears in his book, Leave It to Boomer: A Look at Life, Love and Parenthood by the Very Model of the Modern Middle-Age Man.
Lisa Smith Molinari, an 18-year Navy spouse, mother of three and humor columnist, published an article, “I Want a Wife, Too” in the May issue of Military Spouse magazine. Check out her 
a “unique category with maybe two or three billion people.”
has released a book, A Real Mother: stumbling through motherhood. A columnist for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, she quips her bio reads like a bad joke: “After working as a lifeguard, a Peace Corps volunteer, a middle school teacher, a switchboard operator and finally, an attorney (but don’t hold that against her), she is uniquely qualified to do absolutely nothing. That is why she writes.”
Lisa Tognola’s parody ad for a “Hunk of the Month” club (made of “medical grade plastic … as close as you’ll get to the real thing”) is included in the new Valentine’s Day anthology 