Race, wit and mansplaining: female authors debate at Los Angeles books festival

Trying to address the literary world’s reputation as an old boys’ club, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books included a number of panels in which women discussed humour, race and their own writing

“I kind of hate you for asking [that question],” Mallory Ortberg said to the journalist Ann Friedman at the Writing with a Smirk: Women and Humour panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday.

The question was: “Is there something different about female humour?” Friedman was almost questioning the need for the panel itself. And like Ortberg, the panelists seemed to mostly agree that there wasn’t. Issa Rae, the author of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, ventured tentatively that perhaps women’s humour was more “empathetic”, but she didn’t sound convinced. The humorist Pamela Ribon said that she felt like most women in comedy were waiting for the day when there were “men in comedy” panels. “Are men funny?” Ribon said, suggesting titles for such future discussions. “How to get a job in comedy if you are a man.”