See Luke Cunningham take over our Twitter account!

This week YA author Luke Cunningham took over our Twitter as a part of our weekly Thursday Twitter Takeover. Luke Cunningham is the author of the YA book LEO: Inventor Extraordinaire. (See YEM’s interview with Luke Cunningham here.) See highlights from the takeover below.

Hi! This is @LukeXCunningham author of the new book Leo: Inventor Extraordinaire from @ Zondervan. Let's talk about writing late night comedy and books. #YAauthortakeover

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

The question I get most frequently is "How did you get started in comedy?" I was a teacher for a few years after college but I was barely making a dent in my student loans so I moved to Brooklyn (2005 Brooklyn wasn't cool yet) And I worked as a sales rep….

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

…then at night, I'd hit comedy open mics. Open mics are a rite of passage. They're almost always terrible but every comic waiting to go up thinks, "I'll fix this." And they are almost always wrong! But that delusion- that you can win over any crowd- keeps you coming back…

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

Because some times, you do! A stand up set going well is the best. You just charmed a bunch of strangers. But, I still had a day job…

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

On Monday nights, my roommates and I played in a rec league with a guy from college who was doing much better than all of us because he worked at a hedge fund. (He paid off his student loans with laundered money!) One guy we played with needed a ride home…

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

…This guy saw that I had a car. (It was my aunt's used Ford Escape.) He asked, "Any chance you live near Bronxville?" I knew this guy worked at The Daily Show so "Of course I live near Bronxville." If you don't know NYC geography…

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

Bronxville is in the complete opposite direction from Brooklyn. I'd still drive him home every Monday, 90 minutes out of my way, just so we could chat and I could pick his brain. After a year, that guy gave me my first break as a writers assistant on another Comedy Central show

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

The lesson: give rides to strangers…

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

After years of doing stand up and writing a few pilot samples, I got hired as a staff writer on 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon' #yaauthortakeover

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021

Coolest celebrity I met while working at Fallon: Eddie Vedder

Worst: Chuck Scarborough (That guy couldn't suck worse if he had rubber lips) #YAAuthortakeover

— WATCH 📺 LISTEN 🎧 READ 📚 (@YoungEntmag) April 8, 2021