Hollywood After graduating from Harvard, Borowitz moved to
Los Angeles to work for producer
Bud Yorkin at
Tandem Productions, the company Yorkin co-founded with producer
Norman Lear. From 1982 through 1983, he wrote for the television series
Square Pegs, starring
Sarah Jessica Parker. From 1983 through 1984, he wrote for the television series
The Facts of Life. He wrote for various television series through the 1980s. During his marriage to writer and producer
Susan Borowitz (1982–2005), the two co-created
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for six seasons on
NBC and launched the acting career of
Will Smith. The series won NAACP's Image Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993. In 1998, Borowitz co-produced the film
Pleasantville, starring
Reese Witherspoon,
Tobey Maguire,
William H. Macy,
Joan Allen, and
Jeff Daniels. In 2009,
The Borowitz Report began a
Twitter feed, which was voted the number-one Twitter account in the world in a
Time magazine poll in 2011. Eventually, he abandoned the feed. On July 18, 2012, Borowitz announced that
The New Yorker had acquired
The Borowitz Report website, the first time that the magazine had ever made such an acquisition. In its first 24 hours as a
New Yorker feature,
The Borowitz Report garnered the most page views on the entire
New Yorker website.
Television performer In 2002, Borowitz joined the staff of
CNN's
American Morning and soon appeared on the program three mornings a week. In 2004, he covered the
Democratic National Convention for the channel, paired with comedian
Lewis Black of
The Daily Show. He has made numerous appearances on other television programs including
Countdown with Keith Olbermann,
Best Week Ever on
VH1 and
Live at Gotham on
Comedy Central. In 2010, Borowitz appeared on the
PBS show
Need to Know.
Tom Shales, television critic for
The Washington Post, singled out Borowitz for praise, calling him "one of the wittiest Web wags".
Stand-up comedy Borowitz's success as a television performer led to his becoming a strong draw as a stand-up comedian, and he started headlining at major comedy clubs across the country, including
Carolines on Broadway, where he hosts a monthly show called ''
Next Week's News''. Other major comedians who have appeared with him in that show include
Amy Sedaris and
Susie Essman. For four consecutive years starting in 2004, he performed at
The Comedy Festival in
Aspen,
Colorado. In September 2007, he headlined an edition of Next Week's News at the
Bumbershoot festival in
Seattle,
Washington, performing to standing-room-only audiences and critical acclaim in the press, including the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He also performed to a sold-out house at the 2007
New York Comedy Festival, which featured other prominent comedians including
Denis Leary,
Bill Maher, and
Sarah Silverman. In 2008, he hosted a series of sold-out shows at New York City's
92nd Street Y called "Countdown to the Election". The show earned rave reviews and featured such guests as
Arianna Huffington,
Mo Rocca,
Jonathan Alter,
Joy Behar, and
Jeffrey Toobin. He continued to tour the country performing stand-up, including a performance at the
University of California, Santa Barbara in April 2008. The university newspaper,
Daily Nexus, reported that Borowitz played to a packed house and had the audience "erupting with laughter". Comedian
Mike Birbiglia praised Borowitz in a May 2009 profile in
Harvard Magazine: "Andy just picked up stand-up comedy as a hobby, and he's as good at it as anybody." On June 28, 2011, he performed at New York City's
Central Park Summerstage and drew a crowd estimated at 5,000, setting a new record for turnout at a Summerstage spoken-word event.
The New Yorker In 1998, Borowitz began contributing humor to
The New Yorker magazine. He quickly became one of the magazine's most prolific humor contributors, writing dozens of essays including "Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst", selected as one of the funniest humor pieces in the magazine's history and included in
The New Yorker's humor collection
Fierce Pajamas. Two more humor pieces of his appeared in the magazine's 2008 collection
Disquiet, Please! He has also performed at The New Yorker Festival's humor revues at
The Town Hall in New York City with such other
New Yorker contributors as
Woody Allen,
Steve Martin, and
Calvin Trillin. Additionally, he has joined
The New Yorker College Tour, where he has performed with improv group
The Second City and
David Sedaris. In addition to writing for
The New Yorker, Borowitz has written for many other magazines, including
Vanity Fair and
The Believer, and was a primary contributor to the cult magazine
Army Man.
National Book Awards In 2009, Borowitz was chosen by the
National Book Foundation to host the
National Book Awards in New York City. Previous hosts have included such comedians and writers as
Steve Martin and
Garrison Keillor. His performance earned him a return engagement for the 2010 awards ceremony.
The 50 Funniest American Writers In 2011,
Library of America chose Borowitz to edit an anthology of American humor,
The 50 Funniest American Writers. Encompassing American humor from
Mark Twain to
The Onion, the book was set to be released on October 13, 2011. It became a best seller on the day of its publication, reaching number eight on
Amazon.com and becoming the number-one humor book in the United States. It also became the first book in the 32-year history of the Library of America to become a
New York Times and
Wall Street Journal bestseller. Both
Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com named it a Best Book of 2011, and Amazon.com named it the number-one Entertainment Book of the Year. In a feature about the book,
The Washington Post noted its popular success, calling Borowitz "America's finest fake-news creator and sharpest political satirist".
An Unexpected Twist In 2012, Borowitz wrote his first autobiographical work,
An Unexpected Twist, an
Amazon Kindle single. The essay recounts Borowitz's near-death experience in 2008 while undergoing emergency abdominal surgery in New York City. A mixture of dark comedy, hospital drama and love story, the book became a bestseller on its first day of release, placing number one on Amazon's Kindle Single chart. It became the first nonfiction Kindle Single to make
The Wall Street Journal bestseller list, debuting at number six. In his book review for
The New York Times,
Dwight Garner wrote, "Andy Borowitz is the funniest human on Twitter, and that's not mean praise. His first original e-book—the current best-selling Single—is a seriocomic memoir call
ed An Unexpected Twist, about a blockage in his colon that nearly killed him. This funny book has a sneaky emotional gravity. As the time of his illness, he'd been married only a few months, and his small book becomes a rather large love story." In his review of the book, journalist
Seth Mnookin wrote, "Borowitz has become one of the most lauded satirists in the country—think of him as a literary Jon Stewart. His name graces the cover of one of the most successful Library of America volumes ever (The 50 Funniest American Writers* (*According to Andy Borowitz)). He was voted by Time magazine readers as having the #1 Twitter feed in the world. He even hosted the National Book Awards—twice… It's no surprise that Borowitz is able to mine his situation for humor. What makes
An Unexpected Twist even more satisfying is his ability to highlight some of the surreal and infuriating aspects of modern American medical care without hitting the reader over the head with them." On June 25, 2012, Amazon named
An Unexpected Twist the Best Kindle Single of 2012.
Other Since 1999, Borowitz has been the primary host of
The Moth, a New York-based storytelling group. He sings with the literary rock band
Rock Bottom Remainders, a group with a rotating cast of players including
Dave Barry,
Matt Groening,
Roy Blount Jr.,
Stephen King,
Amy Tan,
Robert Fulghum,
Barbara Kingsolver, and
Scott Turow. He has taught
screenwriting in the United States and Europe and is on the guest faculty of the
Maurits Binger Film Institute in
Amsterdam. In October 2012, he became the host of the BBC comedy series
News Quiz USA. The hit comedy series has millions of listeners on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K. and is broadcast on the public radio station WNYC in New York. ==Personal life==