Slate’s ‘Dear Prudence,’ Daniel Mallory Ortberg, to visit as Poynter Fellow

Daniel Mallory Ortberg, an author, editor, and co-founder of the humor website The Toast, will speak at Yale on Tuesday, Nov. 14 as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism.

The event is co-sponsored by several undergraduate organizations: The Politic, the Yale Women’s Center, the Yale Record, the Sphincter Troupe, the LGBTQ Co-Op, and Fifth Humor. It is free and open to the public.

Ortberg, a feminist author and comedy writer, now writes Slate’s “Dear Prudence” advice column. He ran The Toast, a feminist website, from 2013 to 2016. The Toast was known to take on classic literature in humorous, women-centered ways. That’s a favorite topic of Ortberg’s, whose first book, “Texts from Jane Eyre,” was published in 2014. It’s a book of imagined text conversations with “your favorite literary characters.”

Before starting The Toast, Ortberg wrote for Gawker and the Hairpin, where he met his co-founder at The Toast. When The Toast shut down in 2016, Hillary Clinton wrote a thank you note to the website.  In 2015, Ortberg was included on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in media list.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree in 1927 from Yale. The fellowship brings to campus journalists from a wide variety of outlets who have made significant contributions to their field. Among recent Poynter fellows are Lindy West, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Ezra Edelman.