Courtney G. Bowman '11

“I knew that I wanted to write but I didn’t know in what capacity,” says Courtney G. Bowman ’11, recalling her time in high school. At Harvard, she found her comedic voice, first writing for and then becoming president of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

Outside of comedy, Bowman’s medium of choice is fiction. She has contributed to the Advocate, and she wrote a series of cyclical short stories for her creative English thesis. She cites “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout as a literary influence.

“In high school she was hilariously serious about poetry,” says her brother Johnny F. Bowman ’11. In college, that changed as her friends got into comedy and she followed suit. She became a writer for the Lampoon and developed a sense of humor that fellow Lampoon writer Benjamin U. Steiner ’11 finds highly original: “She always tries to write what no one else has written before,” he says. Bowman prioritizes this search for novelty in her comedy writing. “I feel like in humor it’s very important to break format. You always want to subvert the assumptions of your audience,” she says.

Her humor has also been well received outside of Harvard. She and Lampoon writing partner Cora F. Frazier ’11 published a parody of the popular teen novel “Twilight” entitled “Nightlight.” It became a New York Times bestseller.

At the intersection of Harvard and comedy—both notorious ‘boys’ clubs’—Bowman’s rise to the Lampoon presidency is a rare feat for a female student. She hopes that her success can positively influence other female writers on campus. “I feel very proud to have broken that glass ceiling,” she says. Steiner credits Bowman with the recent increase in female writers at the Lampoon: “She’s just very vocal and very present … People like to know that there are other girls in comedy when it’s not the first thing that comes to mind as to what they’d pursue.”

Despite her experiences with gender issues in comedy, Bowman has kept both her writing and her leadership at the Lampoon relatively ungendered. Steiner says, “sometimes you see girls trying to counteract the ‘boys’ club’ atmosphere by making girl comedy, [but] she just wants comedy to be comedy and not have a gender … She’s the kind of leader who would punch you in the face if you challenged her—metaphorically speaking.”

Yi Cai ’11, Bowman’s roommate and a fellow Lampoon member, highlights Bowman’s well-roundedness. “She is one of the funniest people I’ve met on campus ... [but also] a mentor for a lot of people outside of the activities she does, really involved in the house and community in general.” Cai emphasizes that Bowman is a strong supporter of Winthrop House intramurals.

As for the future, Bowman has yet to decide on her plans. She confides, with the kind of seriousness expected between a Lampoon writer and her Crimson interviewer, “I see myself going into business, maybe trying to run a start-up company, going, I don’t know, hopefully going the Goldman route.” Her Lampoon collaborator Steiner says, “I always say she’ll end up in L.A. writing for TV, but she insists she’ll be in a shack somewhere writing short stories.” He adds, knowingly, “who knows? Maybe she’ll end up on Wall Street.”