Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then and Now...Before We Forget - Tapa blanda

Remember ironing your hair? Rolling it in soda cans to straighten it? Lacquering it with enough spray that it could ward off bullets? Ever slather on cement-colored lipstick so heavy, you looked like a zombie princess? Remember hot pants and platform heels? The danger of patent-leather shoes? Were you a secretary, nurse, or teacher, but only, as our mothers urged us, until you found “Mr. Right.” In her new book, LAUGH OUT LOUD: 40 WOMEN HUMORISTS CELEBRATE THEN AND NOW...BEFORE WE FORGET, Allia Zobel Nolan and 40 funny ladies from the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop chronicle these blips in time as they look back at life in the past lane. Zobel Nolan and the other dancing queens then fast forward to today and write about what it’s like to blink and wake up to be 50, 60, 70, and beyond—experiences ranging from cremation ceremonies to marrying younger men, from senior online dating to finding yourself a menopausal maniac in Mexico.

Allia Zobel Nolan is an internationally published author of over 175 traditionally published titles for adults and children. Her work ranges from the Divine to the feline, including such titles as WHATEVER IS LOVELY: A 90-DAY DEVOTIONAL AND JOURNAL; ANGELS IN THE BIBLE STORYBOOK (both from Zondervan); THE WORRYWART’S PRAYER BOOK, (HCI); THE JOY OF BEING 50-PLUS (illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist, ROZ CHAST); WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU: A BOOK CELEBRATING DIFFERENCES, and a recent bestseller, CAT CONFESSIONS: A KITTY-COME-CLEAN-TELL-ALL BOOK, (Harvest House), which has sold over 112,000 copies. She lives and laughs out loud with her husband and furry children, Colleen Fiona Shannon Nolan, and Nolan Nolan, in New England.

The Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop (dubbed the “Woodstock of Humor”) at The University of Dayton held its first session in 2000 as a one-time event to commemorate the Bombeck family’s gift of Erma’s papers to her alma mater. Columnist Art Buchwald, “Family Circus” cartoonist Bil [sic] Keane, and author and ERA advocate Liz Carpenter, headlined the event. The workshop was so successful—and so much fun—that the university decided to continue it, reconvening every other year. Immensely popular, the Workshop sells out within hours. The workshop’s mission is simple: to encourage and inspire writers in the same way Erma found encouragement and inspiration at the University of Dayton. Its mantra is timeless: “You can write!”