Writing funny stories lies at the center of Tiffany Midge’s artistic practice. “Humor writing is a kind of self-imposed apprenticeship I’ve designed for myself: How can I incorporate humor into poetry? Fiction? An essay?” she says. “And then there is the added challenge of: How can I write humorously about Native issues and topics [in a way that is] accessible to people outside of the culture? Or, more important, that they find funny.” Midge, who is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, gathers more than seventy such short essays in her second nonfiction book, The Dreamcatcher in the Wry (Bison Books, December 2024). With biting humor, lightness, and discernment, Midge scrutinizes topics as serious as COVID-19 and cultural appropriation and as ordinary as office supplies and beets. “I strive to balance the criticism with the praise,” she writes of her approach. “The celebration with the lament. The complaints with the kudos.”
Tiffany Midge, author of the essay collection The Dreamcatcher in the Wry.
A versatile writer, Midge has published work in newspapers and literary journals and on humor sites and blogging platforms. The majority of The Dreamcatcher in the Wry, in fact, comprises columns that ran in the newspaper the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Idaho and the Colorado-based magazine High Country News. In finding homes for the book’s remaining pieces, Midge went with publications that appreciate her style. “The best thing about the editors who I have placed work with is that they usually enjoy humor and comedy as much as I do,” she says. Midge found that camaraderie with the editors of the Belladonna, a popular satire website launched in 2017 that showcases pieces exclusively by women and writers of marginalized genders several times a week. In a YouTube video posted in September 2024, managing editor Emily Kapp notes that the editors are looking for “strong characters with an interesting point of view; a unique premise; fun, new forms; specific, funny details; and heightening.” (Kapp defines heightening as “when a joke gets [wackier], more absurd, and [crazier] as the piece goes on.”) Submissions to the Belladonna are open on a rolling basis via e-mail; the editors do not accept poetry or fiction. The editors also frequently share craft guidance and offer brief feedback for all pieces they pass on, saying it’s a “core part of our mission to nurture and support writers at all stages of their career.”
The Belladonna is hosted on Medium, which launched in 2012 as a blogging platform and features a wide range of content, including poetry, fiction, science writing, business tips, career advice, and more. Midge created her own profile on Medium in 2017 and self-published several essays. “I liked that I could give a spotlight to my writing and ideas independently,” she says. To access all of the platform’s content, readers must pay $5 a month to become members. Members in turn can apply for the partner program, through which they can publish posts and receive a fee correlated to the popularity of their posts. Medium’s algorithm assigns all posts an “estimated quality rating”; if that rating is high enough, a member of Medium’s curatorial team will consider the piece for wider promotion, evaluating its writing and craftsmanship, value and impact, and originality, among other criteria.
In The Dreamcatcher in the Wry, Midge offers humor writing advice in “How to Be Funny Tips.” (She suggests, for example: “Add ‘the Musical’ after your favorite movies, organizations, fast food franchises, or businesses. Example: ‘The Big Lebowski, the Musical.’”) The piece originally appeared in the online biannual Hunger Mountain, which is edited by graduate students and faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. The editors prize “vulnerability, adventure, and accessibility” and, in 2024, began featuring more hybrid work alongside poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. “We seek hybrid assemblages that obliterate, sneak beyond, slither between, ooze under—yes subvert—genre(s),” write the editors. Submissions will reopen in March with a $3 submission fee.
In much of her work, Midge pokes fun at people’s assumptions about and ignorance of Indigenous culture and U.S. history. She placed three such essays in Yellow Medicine Review, a journal of Indigenous literature, art, and thought, which is edited at Southwest Minnesota State University by Judy Wilson. Established in 2007, the print biannual features poetry, fiction, essays, and art, and is often curated by a guest editor. The editors occasionally publish themed issues; recent volumes have focused on fear, defining moments, and music. Submissions from writers who are Indigenous, which the editors define as “representative of all precolonial peoples,” for the Spring 2025 issue, which Kimberly Blaeser will guest edit, will open on January 15.
Since 1998, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has been posting humor writing nearly every day online. “I particularly like [that] McSweeney’s [publishes] what’s current insofar as in the news or with the culture,” says Midge. The website, which has published two open letters by Midge, is part of the larger McSweeney’s publishing operation. Submissions to the humor website are open via e-mail year-round; the editor, Chris Monks, advises writers to keep their pieces under a thousand words.
Dana Isokawa is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine and the editor in chief of the Margins.
