Carlos Greaves is an Afro-Latino electrical engineer turned comedy writer — a career move that haunts his parents to this day. He’s a former Onion contributor and Second City instructor who coaches at Hillside Writing and runs the humor newsletter Shades of Greaves. He is also the topical satire columnist for the humor site McSweeney’s.
His writing has been featured in The New Yorker, The Borowitz Report, and NPR. In 2023, he was a writer on the Peacock special, Back That Year Up, hosted by Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. He is currently developing Revolucionarios: A Comedy About Regime Change, an audio fiction series about a ragtag group of guerillas attempting to overthrow their country’s authoritarian dictator.
Logline: Esperanza Fierro wants to become America’s greatest superhero. But when her immigration status gets in the way of being hired by the country’s top teams, she is forced to take a job with the only crew that will hire her, The Amazings, who are anything but.
2024 Yes, And Laughter Lab Fellowship 2025 Hollyshorts Film Festival Screenwriting Competition – Semifinalist 2025 Stage32 New Voices in Animation Screenwriting Contest – Finalist 2026 Cinequest Screenwriting Competition – Finalist
“It’s not easy to make this current political moment funny, but Greaves and Hogan pull it off again and again.” –Nikki Glaser
We know, we know: A book about authoritarianism? In 2026? What, are the writers living in some liberal snowflake nightmare land? Or Germany in 1933?
Listen, we get it. There may not be much need right now for tips on how to live in an autocracy, but who knows? Maybe somewhere down the line, like this weekend, or tomorrow, or five minutes from now, you’ll come upon a bombastic military parade, or a masked federal agent cosplaying as Sergeant Slaughter asking for your papers, or an octogenarian former beauty-pageant mogul cornering you in the new White House ballroom, droning on and on about the evils of windmills, and you will be glad to have read this book.
From how to stick your head in the sand to avoid thinking about your dictator, to the most effective ways to reeducate the masses, Ginny Hogan and Carlos Greaves’s hilarious (and oddly reassuring?) Obey in Advance has you covered–whether you want to Make Authoritarianism Great Again or not.
Spoilers
Highlighted in Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of 2023
Do you enjoy movies? Sharp satire? Laughter in general? If so, this book was written for you.
Spoilers is a collection of satirical stories that poke fun at thirty of Hollywood’s most famous films and franchises. The Little Mermaid writes a not-so-happily-ever-after, tell-all memoir about marrying into the royal family, Princess Leia wonders why the Jedi are always the underdogs against the Dark Side, whose political views ought to be way less popular, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover slowly loses his mind as he investigates a troublemaker who keeps popping up everywhere named Forrest Gump.
A hilarious debut from frequent New Yorker and McSweeney’s contributor Carlos Greaves, Spoilers will leave you laughing at hitherto unexamined plot points of your favorite films, at the sorry state of the world we live in, and definitely at whoever’s idea it was to open a theme park full of people-eating dinosaurs.
You can stay up to date on what Carlos is up to, as well as get satire and funny personal essays delivered straight to your inbox by subscribing to Shades of Greaves below:
