The Robert Benchley Society Announces the Top-Ten Semifinalists in 2013 RBS Humor Writing Competition

Today David Trumbull, Chairman, Robert Benchley Society, announced the top ten semi-finalists in this year's humor writing competition. "There were many fine entries and the preliminary judges are to be commended for their dedication in carefully reading and ranking the entries. "I know it was not easy, in some cases, for judges to place a rank order to entries that were so good that, in a less exclusive contest, any one of them might have been number one," said Mr. Trumbull, "however, the results, which were derived from a tabulation of all the score cards, in the end, produced a definitive list of the ten funniest and most Benchley-like," Trumbull continued.

This years preliminary judges were:

• Sharon Lyon, a founding member of the Robert Benchley Society

• Matt Hahn, Chairman of the Washington "Lost Locomotive" Chapter of the RBS

• Daniel Montville, winner of the 2007 RBS Award for Humor Writing

• Chris Morgan, Vice Chairman, East Coast, RBS

• Ed Tasca, winner of the 2009 RBS Award for Humor Writing

• Michele Wojciechowski, professional humor writer and stand-up comediene

The top ten entries (in alphabetical order) are:

• Lowell T. Christensen of White Rock, N.M. for The Excruciating History of Dentistry

• Chelsea Fisher of Arlington, Virginia for The Old Movie Shuffle

• Ramona Grigg of Drummond Island, Mich. for Budget-Cutting the Hard Way

• Dave Jaffe of Deerfield, Illinois for Quality is Job Three out of Seven!: How to Create a Press Release

• Barbara Samuels of Port St Lucie, Florida for Take a Gesund-hike

• E. Mitchell of Palatine, Illinois for How to Be Human

• Lisa Smith Molinari of Newport, R.I. for The Future of Archaeology

• Cindy Lane Poch of Stillwater, Minnesota for Iatrophobia

• C.J. Scuffins of Dublin Ireland for Quick! Sand!

• Jerry Zezima of Coram, N.Y. for As a man who is known far and wide...

The final determination of the final first, second, third, and fourth place entries will be made by this year's final judge Dr. Gina Barreca, author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World (St. Martin’s), who has appeared on 20/20, The Today Show, CNN, the BBC, NPR, Oprah, and Dr. Phil to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor. Her earlier books include the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor (reissued in a “classic” edition in 2013), Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League, and six other books she's written-- in addition to sixteen she's edited. They've been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. Gina, whose columns from The Hartford Courant are distributed worldwide by the McClatchy-Tribune Syndicate, is Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut. Her B.A. is from Dartmouth College, where she was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar, her M.A. is from Cambridge University, where she was a Reynold's Fellow, and her Ph.D. is from the City University of New York, where she lived close to a good delicatessen. Gina writes regularly for Psychology Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Huffington Post; she has also written for The New York Times, The Independent, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. She grew up in Brooklyn, now lives with her husband in Connecticut, and has two step-sons who are at that adorable age where they’re attorneys. A new member of the Friars' Club, a "Voices and Visions" honoree of CT Women's Hall of Fame, winner of UConn's most distinguished teaching award, and a keynote at events from The Erma Bombeck Conference, the National Association of Independent Schools, Women In Federal Law Enforcement, The Smithsonian, and The Chicago Humanities Festival, Gina can be found in the Library of Congress or in the make-up aisle of Walgreens.

The awards will be given out that the Ten International Annual Gathering of the Robert Benchley Society, Friday through Sunday, November 22 through 24, 2013, in Boston. The theme of this year's Annual Gathering is "You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man."