Kurt Luchs

Kurt Luchs has published poems in such leading literary outlets as The Bitter Oleander, Plume Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, the Nervous Breakdown, South Florida Poetry Journal, the Sun Magazine, Verdad Magazine, Reed Magazine, Into the Void, La Piccioletta Barca, and London Grip. In 2021 he won the Pushcart Prize for his poem "Father's Belt." In 2019 he won the Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and finished second in the Fischer Poetry Prize at the Telluride Literary Festival. His poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, was published in 2019 by Finishing Line Press. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, was issued in 2021 from Sagging Meniscus Press, which also published his humor collection, It's Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It's REALLY Funny), in 2017. Before returning to his first love of poetry, he wrote humor for the New Yorker, the Onion, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among other outlets, and also contributed to many of the Onion books, including Our Dumb Century, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. In television, he was a staff writer for Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and wrote for the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. In radio, he wrote for and managed the American Comedy Network, a comedy syndication company. From 2002 to 2019, he edited and wrote for the literary humor site TheBigJewel.com. His work has been included in the humor anthologies Moms Are Nuts (Vansant Creations), Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of the McSweeney's Humor Category (Knopf/Random House), and May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor (HarperCollins). Barnes & Noble published his book Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: A Wiseguy's Guide to the Workplace, which applies gangster movie quotes to best business practices. As part of the sibling comedy troupe the Luchs Brothers, he was responsible for the world's first -- and so far only -- Sex Pistols parody, Kill Me I'm Rotten, and co-authored The Luchs Brothers' End-of-the-World Party Book (Prairie Sun/Retread).