Erma Bombeck

Humor Columnist

Erma Bombeck captured with paring-knife-sharp humor the daily life of a new post-WWII American phenomenon: the suburban housewife. Having figured out from her own personal experience that if you can laugh at it you can live with it, she chronicled the housewife's daily struggles in her column "At Wit's End" three days a week from 1965 to 1996. Her column eventually appeared in 900 newspapers across the country and in books such as I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression and The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank. Bombeck brought to American awareness the lives of homemakers whose efforts often felt invisible and taken for granted. She let women across America know: You are not alone. In fact, we number in the millions. I, too, am an American housewife, and I will laugh by your side.

Find out how Erma got started as a humorist. And chuckle along as she pokes fun at kids (“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen; when they’re finished, I climb out"); diets (“I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage”); and especially herself (“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance”).  

One-hour program consists of a ~40-minute monologue in-character, followed first by a Q&A with “Erma Bombeck” and then by a Q&A with the scholar/presenter.