Thurber Prize finalist Alison Espach took the podium to state her case for her book The Wedding People. Because she gave birth just five months before, she regaled in how different it felt to have real clothes on. She also declined a pre-show one-on-one interview with host John Kenney to gather make fun information on her because she was “practicing setting boundaries.”
New York Times bestselling author and funny man John Kenney hosted the Thurber Prize for American Humor at the packed Canzani Center on the campus of Columbus College of Art & Design on May 7, 2026. John is hysterical. His self-deprecating humor has a common path – hate on your subject because they are so much better than you, thereby showing them love.
Kenney, who hosted the event twice before, won the Thurber Prize in 2014 for his novel Truth in Advertising and was a finalist in 2019. He claimed he thought such events were useless and silly until he won in 2014 and then returned to that mindset after he lost in 2019.
All three finalists were present. So was Emily Flake, the winner of the 2026 Thurber Prize for Cartoon Art. Columbus born James Thurber was, after all, both a humor writer and a cartoonist. Emily has been a cartoonist with The New Yorker since 2008. Thurber’s granddaughter Sarah Sauers presented her with the weighty crystal prize.
Each finalist was given time to talk about their writing journey and read a short caption from their book.
Shalom Auslander, a finalist who lives in Los Angeles, mistook the event upon taking the podium for being the Pulitzer Prize ceremony. He referred to himself as a “coastal elite and thought Ohio was just made up.”
Shalom, who was raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish home in Monsey, NY, stated his case for his very funny book Feh which means ‘yuck’ in Yiddish. He mentioned that we may be familiar with his previous work The Old Testament. He claimed that it was better than the sequel.
Shalom read a passage from Feh that was both shocking and hysterical. The passage he read was about a suburban father who while his wife was away from home one day suddenly noticed what he called “a glory hole” appear first in his laundry room and then other places through out the house. A glory hole is a place where a man sticks his appendage in hopes of being satisfied. The men were in a house of disrepute miles away but – magically – their unit made it to his home. The suburban father’s confusion with said event leads to an opportunity for great humor.
Shalom was the creator of the Showtime series ‘Happyish’ in 2015 that ran for one season. Just weeks after the series was given the green light, original lead actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose. Shalom, who also worked in the advertising industry, said he hated it on at least a dozen different levels that he reeled off.
The third finalist, Steven Rowley, was the only past Thurber Prize winner, having won in 2023 for his book The Guncle. This year’s entrant was the sequel The Guncle Abroad, a USA Today bestseller and a ‘Today Show read with Jenna book club’.
Rowley, whose attire was one of the evening’s most colorful, lives in Palm Springs, California. He called Ohio the state that is almost a palindrome but isn’t.
His book is about his niece and nephew expressing to him their displeasure with their father getting remarried in Italy after their mother’s passing and the chaos that ensues.
The winner’s envelope was delivered by a golden retriever, a tip of the cap for James Thurber’s love of dogs. Your 2026 Thurber Prize for American Humor winner……Shalom Auslander.
Acclaimed poet and performer Barbara Fant was introduced at the event as the new Thurber House executive director. She is a nationally recognized poet living in Los Angeles and will be featured this summer at a Thurber House picnic event.
The Thurber House announced there was a star-studded visitor this past year from JT fan Elvis Costello. The singer-songwriter signed James Thurber’s bedroom closet as ‘The singer who bit people’ in reference to a classic Thurber short story.
Columbus, Ohio native & literary giant James Thurber was born on December 8, 1894 at 147 Parsons Ave in Columbus. He graduated from East High School, attended Ohio State University, wrote for both The Lantern and humor magazine The Sundial, and later for the Columbus Dispatch.
He eventually moved to New York and wrote for the New Yorker magazine where he established himself in the mid twentieth century as a humorist with few equals. He was a writer, cartoonist, and playwright. He wrote ‘My Life and Hard Times’ (1933) mostly about Columbus. His popular story ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ appeared in The New Yorker in 1939 and in film adaptation starring Danny Kaye, in 1947; the remake starring Ben Stiller was released in 2013.
The Thurber Prize for American humor returned to Columbus where it belongs in 2017, after almost a fifteen year run in New York, though last year’s event was held at 54 Below in Manhattan. This event should be on everyone’s social calendar, if for nothing else than its entertainment value.
“The Thurber Prize for American humor is the nation’s highest recognition of humor writing,” said host John Kenney. “The wit, James Thurber wrote, makes fun of other persons. The satirist makes fun of the world. The humorist makes fun of himself or herself but in doing so, he or she identifies himself with people, that is people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. The finalists here tonight helped me make sense of the world, with all due respect to the vital role of each Kardashian.”
Sources: Shalom Auslander creates a curmudgeon much like himself in Happyish by Meredith Blake, April 24 2015, www.latimes.com; The pursuit of ‘Happyish’: creator Shalom Auslander tackles big questions by Cynthia Littleton, Aug 23 2015, https://variety.com; Writer Shalom Auslander catalogs his lifetime battle with self-contempt in ‘Feh’ by Tonya Mosley, July 18 2024, www.npr.org; The 2025 Thurber Prize for American Humor, www.54below.org; The 2022 Thurber Prize for American Humor Award, Broad & High, Jan 18, 2023, www.youtube.com; The 2026 Thurber Prize for American Humor program; www.thurberhouse.org; Poet, Corporate Storyteller & Voice Ove, www.barbarafant.com; 101 things you didn’t know about Columbus by Horace Martin Woodhouse, 2010; Featured picture includes all three writing candidates seated along with cartoonist Emily Flake (far right) and John Kenney at the podium with Thurber House interim executive director and board chair.