Your Caption Has Been Selected: More Than Anyone Could Possibly Want to Know about the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

A behind-the-scenes look at The New Yorker cartoon caption contest, its history, how it’s judged, and the secrets to writing a winning caption

Every week, thousands of people enter The New Yorker cartoon caption contest in hopes of seeing their name and caption in print. But only one person has made it to the finalists’ round an astounding fifteen times and won eight contests: Lawrence Wood, also known as the Ken Jennings of caption writing.

What’s Wood’s secret? What makes a caption good or bad? How do you beat the crowd? And most important, what makes a caption funny?

Packed with 175 of the magazine’s best cartoons and featuring a foreword by Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor of The New Yorker and creator of the caption contest, Your Caption Has Been Selected takes you behind the scenes to learn about the contest’s history, the way it’s judged, and what it has to say about humor, creativity, and good writing. Lawrence reveals his own captioning process and shows readers how to generate the perfect string of words to get a laugh. Informative, funny, and just a little vulgar, this book will delight anyone who doesn’t have a personal vendetta against the author.

Lawrence Wood has been a finalist in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting fifteen times and won eight contests. For more than twenty years he was a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught a class on housing and poverty law that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as a ＂waste of time.＂ Lawrence is currently the supervising attorney at Legal Action Chicago.