Speaking on Brushing Up on Your Comedy (Literally)
Interviewer: TRACY MORIN
Featured Guest: AVA FUNG
In this episode, you’ll hear Mentor Tracy Morin, a magazine writer and editor, talk with Mentee Ava Fung, a high schooler from New York City, about her humorous non-fiction piece, “Toothache.” Ava’s piece compares her feeling of being an outcast in her family to their toothbrushes: theirs shiny and electric, hers ratty and utterly normal. Tracy and Ava discuss the importance of writing in community and how Ava has blended her stand-up comedy into her other creative work. Listen in to this fun episode, and it might even make you feel sympathetic for a certain everyday object that most of us never give a second thought: the humble toothbrush.
Tracy Morin
Tracy Morin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Literature from Eckerd College, where she received the Letters Collegium Award of Honor for Excellence in Literature and graduated with High Honors. She also received a Freeman Award for Study in Asia, used to conduct independent research in India on the practice of pilgrimage. In her professional career, she has nearly 20 years of experience working as a writer and editor for dozens of magazines, websites and companies, with a focus on beauty, food and beverage, mental health and lifestyle topics. She currently serves as senior copy editor and/or contributing writer for eight of these outlets and won the Silver Award for a Regular Department in the American Society of Business Publication Editors 2011 Awards National Competition. In her creative writing pursuits, she has won both nonfiction and poetry awards; served as a creative nonfiction reader at the University of Mississippi’s literary magazine, The Yalobusha Review; and is currently focusing on creating essays, memoir and short fiction.
Ava Fung
Mentee Ava Fung is still kicking it. Born and raised in New York, she has developed the strength of your average subway rat and like the rat she is always looking to find the best eats, shuffling quickly past slow walkers, and scaring people with a simple glance. Fung writes for her school newspaper The Spectator, does stand-up comedy, runs track, and enjoys cooking. Priding herself on her determination, she has a fortune cookie wrapper in her phone that reads "You didn't come this far to only come this far." She has been published by Teen Ink.
