Journalist is editor of nation’s longest-running journal of light verse.
Melissa Balmain, an adjunct instructor in the English department at the University of Rochester, is the Humor Writer of the Month this December at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.
Balmain edits Light, an online journal of light verse established in 1992. A journalist and poet, Balmain has published her humor in such venues as The New Yorker, the New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Satirist, the Washington Post, and many anthologies. Her poetry collection, Walking in on People (Able Muse Press), appeared in 2014. The workshop’s namesake, Bombeck was a popular mid-20th-century humor writer who published 12 books and a column, “At Wit’s End,” about her experiences as a suburban mother, that was syndicated in 900 newspapers.
