ROBERT BENCHLEY SOCIETY
Finalists in 2007 Robert Benchley Humor Prize Competition
BOSTON, MAY 14, 2007 -- David Trumbull, Chairman of the Robert Benchley Society
extends thanks to all 72 entrants in the Third Annual Robert Benchley Humor Prize Competition
and congratulates the ten finalists whose essays will now be passed on to Dave Barry,
Pulitzer Prize winning humorist, author of the New York Times best seller, Dave Barry's Money Secrets
for the final judging.
The ten finalists are:
- Daniel Montville of Oak Park, Illinois for
How to Write a Book
- George Waters of Pasadena, California for
"T'ai Chi for Beginners," or "War and Peace"
- Jennifer Byrne of Glassboro, New Jersey for
You Shouldn’t Have (Really)
- Diana Grove of New Orleans, Louisiana for
A Perfectly Acceptable Pet
- Ed Tasca of Toronto, Ontario for
Hello again, Mr. Uh--!?
- Brenda Pontiff of Los Angeles, California for
A Warning Concerning Self-Help Propaganda
- Mary Lyn Eagle, aka Marie Hawk, of Oroville, Washington for
Step by Step Instructions for Surviving a Computer Melt Down
- John Parnell of Macon, Georgia for
I stared at my executive editor's e-mail to me...
- David Carlyon of Larchmont, New York for
The Next Robert Benchley
- Anthony Martinetti of Pawtucket, Rhode Island for
While Reading THE RAVEN on Wikipedia
The Robert Benchley Society, a not-for-profit organization, was founded in Boston,
Massachusetts in 2003. It has since grown to include members in several countries.
Information about the Society may be found at www.robertbenchley.org.
Robert Benchley (Grandfather of Peter Benchley who wrote Jaws ) rose to fame as a
leading humorist in the 1920s writing for Harvard Lampoon, The New Yorker,
Vanity Fair, where he shared an office with Dorothy Parker, Life magazine, and
as a humor columnist for the Hearst Newspapers. Benchley was also notorious as a
member of the Algonquin Round Table. Today's leading humorists, including
Dave Barry, Woody Allen, Bob Newhart, Russell Baker, and Steve Martin, gratefully
acknowledge Robert Benchley's influence on their work.
Horace J. Digby, the 2005 Robert Benchley Humor Prize says:
"I found my first Benchley book in my parents attic. I was eight years old, pretending
to be too sick to go to school. I never knew adults wrote books like that. It was
love at first sight. I read it over and over. That's when I knew I wanted to be a
humor writer when I grew up, just like Robert Benchley."
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