Satire

To me, satire perfects the marriage of problem-solving and creative writing. It requires me to find (or be given) a prompt to work with, brainstorm possible connection points to other parts of culture, and find humor in the underlying premise. I started actively writing satire in March 2020, when I got hired by my college’s biggest comedy paper. Timing was fortuitous, considering I needed a new, fully-indoor hobby to pair with the state of the world at that point. Since then, I’ve written for a few publications — and listed some of my favorite pieces here.

The Free Peach

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When I was at Cal, The Free Peach was campus’s main comedy publication. I applied to join them in the spring of my junior year (about a year after they were founded) and officially joined the team in March of 2020. I learned the basics of news satire and served as the team’s de facto graphic designer for a year, at which point the Editors-in-Chief asked me to take the helm when they graduated. I served as Editor-In-Chief as a masters student. My tenure as editor saw a 2.5 times growth in social media followership, making The Free Peach Berkeley’s most-followed publication.

I wrote several dozen articles while on staff — the most of any writer at that point in the publication’s history. Here are a few of my favorites:

Plot Twist

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Plot Twist Magazine was a film-focused satire page run by Daniel Menegaz, an old Free Peach colleague of mine. Daniel brought me on as to write and to Photoshop images for the half-year that the site was active. I wrote some of my favorite all-time articles for this site; here are a few of them:

The Hard Times

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The Hard Times is sometimes described as “The Punk Rock Onion.” As a bassist in a post-punk band, I figured I would have a good basis to post punk content on their page*. They recently added me to their freelance contributor pool, so I guess they agreed.