Creative Wordplay Puns

Authors in Conversation at PowerHouse Arena

In our “look at me” era of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the 24-hour news cycle, privacy now seems a quaint relic. Everyone’s a brand. Self-effacement is a thing of the past.

Yet as Carmela Ciuraru’s book reminds us, it wasn’t always like this. Nom de Plume explores the fascinating stories of 16 authorial impostors across centuries and cultures, plumbing the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of their fame.

A wide-ranging exploration of pseudonyms both familiar and obscure, Nom de Plume is part detective story, part exposé, part literary history, and an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.

Carmela Ciuraru is not a pseudonym. Her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them and Solitude. She also has written for a number of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and others.

The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics is the definitive account of the humble pun, its history, and why punning still matters.

In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack — a former Presidential Speechwriter for Bill Clinton and winner of the O. Henry world pun championship — leads readers on a remarkable journey through time, culture and language. Rich with anecdotes, history, pop culture, neuroscience, literature, anthropology and humor, this book will inspire every reader to reconsider what they think they know about puns.

Along the way, Pollack tracks down history’s first recorded pun, traces the history of the shaggy dog story, unearths Thomas Jefferson’s lost commentary on punning, explores the origins of the groan, and explains why — in evolutionary terms — punsters might get the last laugh.

In addition to his political work, Pollack wrote for The Hartford Courant and spent three years in Spain as a freelance foreign correspondent writing for the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Miami Herald, and Advertising Age.

2011 NBA Draft Results: Winner- Bismack Biyombo and Jimmer ...

Bismack Biyombo and Jimmer Fredette Have Names You Can't Help but Play With

We can look forward to listening to announcers use Bismack, Jimmer, Fredette and Biyombo as verbs, nouns and adjectives during NBA coverage.

Here are some examples of the wordplay that will likely ensue; "Fredette about it", "Mind your own Bismacks", "It's Jimmer Time", "You've been Biyombod" and "He got Bismacked".

People are going to get creative at turning these names into puns. The versatility is going to make for some awesome article titles and catch phrases in the very near future.

These are the kinds of names that are fun to say. These names provide analysts and writers pure gold. They join an elite group of names in sports. D'Brickashaw, Smush, Milton Bradley, Coco Crisp, you've got some competition.

I'm starting a movement to launch a "Bismacked: Verb, it's what you do", ad campaign immediately.

Stayed tuned to Bleacher Report for all things related to the NBA Draft , from Live Results to Grades and Trade Rumors .

Story Celebrations, A Program Guide for Schools and Libraries

Design for communication, conceptual graphic design basics

Transcendental wordplay, America's romantic punsters and the search for the language of nature

The linguistics of laughter, a corpus-assisted study of laughter-talk

Basics Advertising: Copywriting, The Creative Process of Writing Text for Advertisements Or Publicity Material