It also occurs to me I have no African-American writers.

hey, how about Tyler Perry? Just kidding.

The Master and Margarita? The Island of Dr. Moreau? The Confidence Man? (I think The Confidence Man should be taught more often, and certainly dealing a man who may or may not be the devil puts it into the realm of magical realism.

You could do the grotesque/there are things man was not meant to know section with short stories. Welty plus Poe, Bradbury, Bierce, and the jittery extreme of Lovecraft. MFK Fisher's The Lost, the Strayed, the Stolen. You could even throw in some classic SF movies, in which science is evil and the good guy gets the girl.

Would one of August Wilson's plays work? They're often about love, in various guises.

Kat, the Angela Carter stories I was thinking of were "The Lady in the House of Love" and "Wolf-Alice".

Kristin, if my student's account of the subways in Tokyo is any indication, that's no hoax.

He HATED taking the trains.

Ooh, for grotesque you could teach Anne Sexton's Transformations. I read that volume over and over again when I was a girl.

Geek Love would be great for grotesque.

Angela Carter: I'd say Magic Toyshop or Nights at the Circus. (Though personally I love The Passion of New Eve, but I don't think that'll fly in your class.)

I'd like a contemporary US playwright who wrote a comedy, juliana.

Beth Henley! C'mon, "Miss Firecracker"

Magic Realism: "Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella is really one of the few American runs at Magic Realism that's any good. Michael Chabon kind of trends that way though.

Colin Firth and Jon Stewart's conversation on The Daily Show: Comedy Gold.

Simon, Henley, and Durang are all good contemporary choices. George F. Walker is an awesome current Canadian playwright, chock-full of dark humor.

However, I'd rec Terrence McNally, Paula Vogel, or Wendy Wasserstein. Those and the previous three listed are fairly canonical and have humorous plays.

The thing about Durang which could be a good or a bad thing, is that I find the funniest of his plays requires you to have a fairly wide knowledge of other theatre pieces. If they have already read Glass Menagerie, it would be fun to read For whom the southern belle tolls, but it doesn' really make much sense if you haven't. The same with Actor's Nightmare, and A Stye in the Eye (which sends up Sam Shepard).

hopping the awesome reading list discussion (man how I want to be one of kat's students) to say

Hey scola - just crossing into staten island if you get off work early today. Profile addy is good.