From Our Soundbooth | February 19, 2015

As the The Missouri Review Miller Audio Prize Contest has grown over the years, we’ve listened to lots of submissions that made us laugh for all the right reasons.  So, this year we have added a humor category for just those submissions. Send us stand-up routines, limerick sequences, riddles, rants, ribaldries, anecdotes, biting satires, absurdisms, and all the rest.  We want to be winked at, elbowed knowingly in the ribs, tickled pink.  Consider the challenge issued!  Submissions are open now, and the entrance fee is whatever donation you are willing to give.

“Consider the Jellyfish,” a submission to last years contest by Elliot Rambach and Abby Wendle is a great example of one sub genre of humor writing that we’d love to see submitted to the new category in this years contest.  So on this weeks podcast, please enjoy this funny, dry anecdote that uses its audio production to push that tone.

Elliot Rambach is a former audio producer for This Land Radio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before his stint at This Land he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Classical Studies. He currently lives in Paris, France, where he teaches English as a second language.

Abby Wendle joined Harvest Public Media in September of 2014, and reports from Tri States Public Radio in Macomb, Ill. She came to Harvest from Tulsa, Okla., where she produced radio for This Land Press. That included partnerships with public radio programs The Story, State of the Re:Union, and The CBC’s Day 6. Her work has earned awards from The Third Coast International Audio Festival, KCRW’s Radio Race, and The National Association of Black Journalists.  A piece she collaborated on “To Be Normal” was also the winner in our 2014 Audio Contest in the Audio Documentary Category. She has worked as an assistant producer for The Takeaway and interned at Radiolab. Abby has a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla., and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

So, all you writers, performers, and producers with a penchant for making people laugh, send your work our way to our new Humor category!