Mallory Ortberg, also known as Daniel M. Lavery, is celebrated for a style that is witty, literary, and wonderfully offbeat. As the co-founder of The Toast and the author of Texts from Jane Eyre, Ortberg became beloved for blending classic literature, internet-era humor, and sharp cultural observation.
If you love Mallory Ortberg’s clever voice, playful irreverence, and ability to find comedy in both the highbrow and the everyday, these authors are well worth exploring:
Samantha Irby writes essays that are bracingly honest, deeply self-aware, and consistently hilarious. Her humor is blunt in the best way, turning personal insecurities, chronic illness, bad jobs, and social discomfort into material that feels both intimate and wildly funny.
Her book We Are Never Meeting in Real Life is a great place to start. Irby’s voice is messier, rawer, and more confessional than Ortberg’s, but readers who enjoy humor with bite, vulnerability, and a fearless point of view will find plenty to love.
Lindy West brings together cultural criticism, memoir, and comedy with remarkable confidence. Her work takes on feminism, body image, internet culture, and media absurdities without ever losing its humor or humanity.
In Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, she writes about misogyny and body shaming with intelligence, warmth, and a fierce comic edge. If Ortberg appeals to you because of the wit beneath the commentary, West is an easy next pick.
Alexandra Petri specializes in satire that feels nimble, strange, and unexpectedly insightful. She can make politics, literature, and social awkwardness all seem equally ripe for absurd comedy.
In A Field Guide to Awkward Silences, Petri turns embarrassment and misadventure into something inventive and delightful. Like Ortberg, she has a gift for taking familiar subjects and twisting them just enough to make them feel gloriously ridiculous.
David Sedaris is a master of the comic essay, known for dry wit, impeccable timing, and an eye for the absurd details of family life. His stories often feel casual on the surface, yet they reveal a precise and generous understanding of human behavior.
In Me Talk Pretty One Day, he writes about language, relatives, travel, and everyday humiliation with equal parts sharpness and charm. If you like Ortberg’s ability to spotlight life’s oddities, Sedaris offers a similarly rewarding sensibility.
Patricia Lockwood’s writing is exuberant, eccentric, and unmistakably her own. She combines dazzling language with irreverence, emotional intelligence, and a delight in the bizarre corners of family and modern life.
Her memoir Priestdaddy recounts her unusual upbringing with a married Catholic priest father, and it’s as funny as it is strange. Readers drawn to Ortberg’s literary playfulness and skewed comic perspective will likely be captivated by Lockwood too.
Sloane Crosley writes polished, perceptive essays that find comedy in the rituals and embarrassments of adult life. Her humor tends to be lighter and more urbane, but it shares Ortberg’s fondness for awkwardness and self-scrutiny.
I Was Told There'd Be Cake is full of clever observations, social misfires, and beautifully turned sentences. It’s a strong choice for readers who enjoy smart, personable nonfiction with a dry comic touch.
Jennette McCurdy’s memoir writing is frank, darkly funny, and emotionally direct. She handles painful material with a control that makes the humor land even harder, especially when writing about fame, family, and self-definition.
Her memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, balances discomfort, grief, and sharp comedy in memorable ways. Readers who appreciate Ortberg’s candor and ability to keep humor alive in complicated emotional territory may find McCurdy especially compelling.
Kate Beaton brings literary wit, feminist insight, and historical playfulness to comics and illustrated humor. Her work is both accessible and sly, often using deceptively simple setups to deliver sharp cultural commentary.
Her collection Hark! A Vagrant is packed with clever riffs on literature, history, and pop culture. For Ortberg fans who enjoy smart jokes with a bookish streak, Beaton is an especially natural match.
Scaachi Koul writes with brisk humor, clarity, and emotional precision. Her essays move easily between family expectations, cultural identity, relationships, and online life, always anchored by a sharp and recognizable voice.
In One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, she pairs laugh-out-loud moments with deeper reflections on belonging and discomfort. That combination of wit and unease will feel familiar to many Ortberg readers.
R. Eric Thomas writes essays that are generous, funny, and quietly incisive. His work often explores identity, race, faith, and the bewildering mechanics of modern life without sacrificing warmth.
His book Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America offers lively anecdotes, strong comic instincts, and a buoyant voice. If what you love about Ortberg is the mix of intelligence and approachability, Thomas delivers that beautifully.
Carmen Maria Machado writes fiction that is eerie, inventive, and deeply alive to the strangeness beneath ordinary experience. Her work often blends the domestic with the uncanny, creating stories that feel unsettling, playful, and emotionally resonant all at once.
If you enjoy humor with a darker edge and appreciate writers who bend form in surprising ways, try her short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties.
Kelly Link is brilliant at making the surreal feel intimate. Her stories mix fantasy, horror, and fairy-tale logic with wit and emotional depth, often unfolding in worlds that are only a few degrees stranger than our own.
Her collection Get in Trouble showcases her talent for dark humor, unexpected tenderness, and wonderfully odd premises. Readers who like Ortberg’s imaginative sensibility may find Link especially rewarding.
Helen Ellis writes with a sharp, playful voice that turns domestic routines and social expectations into something a little surreal. Her humor can be arch and exaggerated, but it always stays rooted in recognizable anxieties and absurdities.
Fans of Ortberg’s irreverent perspective may enjoy Ellis’s short story collection, American Housewife, which transforms everyday womanhood into something stranger, funnier, and much more mischievous.
Nora Ephron wrote with a conversational brilliance that made intelligence look effortless. Her essays on love, aging, friendship, work, and insecurity are funny, elegant, and disarmingly candid.
Her book I Feel Bad About My Neck is a wonderful example of that voice: warm, self-aware, and full of memorable observations. If Ortberg’s appeal lies partly in sounding both clever and companionable, Ephron fits the bill perfectly.
Jon Klassen is best known for picture books, but his understated humor and impeccable sense of tone make him a surprisingly apt recommendation here. His stories are minimalist on the surface, yet quietly packed with tension, irony, and mischief.
If Ortberg’s carefully controlled humor speaks to you, try Klassen’s wonderfully sly picture book I Want My Hat Back. It’s simple, darkly funny, and far cleverer than it first appears.
