Name: Christine Wenc, author of FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE- an in-person event
Start: 2025-03-20T18:30:00-05:00
End: 2025-03-20T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Boswell Book Company

Christine Wenc, author of FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE- an in-person event
About this Event

Boswell Book Company presents an evening with Christine Wenc, one of the original staff writers for The Onion, who visits with her new book Funny Because It's True: How the Onion Created Modern American News Satire. She will be in conversation with Matt Wild, co-founder and editor of Milwaukee Record

. Signed copies are available on most event preorders. If you have a personalization request, enter it in "order comments" at checkout. Please note: signed copies will ship AFTER the event. Remember to select “In Store Pickup” at check out to avoid unnecessary shipping fees on books you intend to pick up at the event.

The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon. Now, for the first time, the full history of the publication is told by one of its original staffers, author and historian Christine Wenc. Through dozens of interviews, Wenc charts The Onion’s rise, its position as one of the first online humor sites, and the way it influenced television programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Funny Because It’s True peels back the layers to reveal how a group of young misfits from flyover country unintentionally created a cultural phenomenon.

“The inside story of how a comedy institution was born in Wisconsin, cracked up the country, and changed the way we think about news and satire. I devoured it!”—Patton Oswalt

Christine Wenc was a member of The Onion’s original staff from 1988 to 1990 as a UW–Madison undergrad. She has played central roles in highly regarded public history projects for Harvard University Libraries, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the National Library of Medicine among others. She is also trained in midwestern prairie ecosystem restoration and likes to spend time helping to revitalize one of the most ecologically beneficial landscapes on the planet. She grew up in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin.