Jen Spyra

Jen Spyra developed her comic voice in television, magazines, and live performance before publishing Big Time, her debut story collection. Random House describes the book as a set of dark, absurdist satires aimed at celebrity culture, social media, work, marriage, and contemporary ambition. Stephen Colbert contributes the foreword, and the audio edition expands the collaboration with a cast that includes Colbert, Dan Stevens, Lauren Lapkus, Matt Rogers, and Thomas Whittington. Spyra previously wrote for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and contributed humor to The New Yorker. She also voiced political figures on the television series Our Cartoon President. Big Time transfers the compressed setup and escalation of sketch writing into prose, but its stories have room to build strange worlds around recognizable habits. The title story’s displaced screen performer is one example of Spyra using an impossible premise to sharpen a cultural joke.