ABOUT LAURA LANE
Laura Lane is a journalist, comedy writer, podcaster and co-author of two books, Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling and This Is Why You’re Single, which have been translated in eight languages. Both books have been optioned for television and were adapted from sketch shows she co-wrote, starred in and produced. She's written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Vanity Fair, People, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s and was a former columnist for ESPN and an editor for Life & Style and In Touch Weekly.
For The New Yorker she’s written about TV production during COVID-19, the lawyers arguing a Supreme Court abortion case, a professional baby namer, artificial intelligence, the weather, as well as contributing various humor pieces. For Rolling Stone, she wrote an in-depth exploration of motherhood in the music industry. For The San Francisco Chronicle, she wrote the cover of the Sunday Culture section about the publisher of San Francisco's leading Black newspaper. She also contributed to Represent Collaborative (RepCo), a storytelling collaborative that covers activism work and issues of racial and social justice.
Her sketch show, Femme Fairy Tales, ran for a year at UCB in New York and Los Angeles and was selected for the 2020 Chicago Sketch Festival. It was adapted into a book for Seal Press (Hachette) called Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling and Other Feminist Fairy Tales, which released in March 2020 and is available in six languages. It was optioned for television by Gaumont and Freebird Entertainment.
Laura co-hosted the popular podcast This Is Why for six years. The podcast repeatedly hit the iTunes top 10 comedy podcast rankings. It was adapted from her first comedy sketch show and book called This Is Why You’re Single, which was optioned for TV by the Pop Network. Laura co-wrote the pilot. The book is available in seven countries and was called a "witty and wise dating guide [that] combines the social analysis of Sex and the City with the sassy irreverence of Broad City” by In Touch Weekly. The sketch show was called "humorous" by The New York Times and "an entertaining ride" by The Wall Street Journal.
Laura has contributed to three other books. She had a story selected about attending a recruitment event for the NXIVM cult for issue 59 of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, she was on the creative team and wrote jokes for the book Coloring for Grown-Ups: Holiday Fun and has an interview included in the book Callings, by StoryCorps and NPR host David Isay. She’s performed readings at The Strand, The Wing, QED and virtual ones for McSweeney’s and Caveat.
Laura wrote and produced a comedy short for The New Yorker and wrote jokes for season 5 of TruTV's show Billy on the Street. As an entertainment expert she's appeared on many shows and networks including MSNBC, CNN, FOX, CBS, VH1, E! and MTV. As a TV host, she hosted ESPN's poker show Inside Deal, hosted an online show for Major League Soccer and was an entertainment correspondent for People magazine.
Laura studied improv and sketch at the Upright Citizens Brigade and Peoples Improv Theater. She graduated from the University of Southern California, where she double majored in journalism and political science. Laura was Ryan Seacrest’s intern in college and won Rolling Stone magazine's College Journalism Contest for a profile she wrote on him.
Fun facts: Laura was born with one kidney and was once Kristen Wiig's body double. She is based in Brooklyn.