Catonsville native explores the intersection of satire and self-reflection in essay collection

Have you spent years worrying about the way you’re perceived? Have you tried on different personalities in different friend groups?

Have you tried to seem cooler than you really are?

Well, so has Maeve Dunigan. And the Catonsville native has a solution for you: Read her book.

She’s joking. Well, mostly. In Dunigan’s recently released essay collection, “Read This to Look Cool,” the 30-year-old mixes her signature satire with short stories from her life, mostly between her preteen years and early 20s.

There are essays exploring her middle school obsession with “Glee,” her venture into One Direction fanfiction and her expert ability to respond to other people’s Tinder messages. Interspersed between the memoirs are short satirical pieces on the anxiety of writing an email signature, the incomprehensible formula that calculates a credit score, and whether a stranger actually thinks about that embarrassing thing you did that one time.

The one thing I kept thinking while reading this collection? Dunigan has some really great contenders for two truths and a lie. When I interviewed her the other day, I asked her to play the game for this article. See if you can pick out the fib:

1. I once got so high at a Hozier concert that I convinced myself Hozier was basically an ancient deity who was going to kill me.
2. I was riding the themed pirate boat that goes through the Inner Harbor once on a party cruise, and I fell off.
3. My appendix once ruptured while I was in a McDonald’s, and I waited almost 24 hours to go to the hospital.

You’ll have to read the book to find out the answer. Or ask her in person: Dunigan will join The Banner Book Club on Wednesday at 6 p.m. to discuss “Read This to Look Cool.” I spoke to the author ahead of her visit to learn more about the essays and her writing process.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get into writing satire?

I was into writing in high school. I wrote for our school newspaper, but there weren’t a ton of creative writing outlets — I went to Catonsville High — and the ones that did exist, I just wasn’t participating for some reason. I was doing sports and theater and other things that I was worse at, frankly.

I got to college, and I discovered this sketch comedy group, and I got in, and it was sort of like the first time in my life where I really felt like I was good at something, and I just got so much out of it. …

I graduated and was looking for jobs in journalism, not finding them. Eventually, I moved to New York to work in an admin position at NYU, and that’s when I started getting involved in the New York writing scene and satire and standup and alt-Brooklyn comedy scene, which is where I ended up making a lot of friends and making connections with other writers. Ultimately, that was hugely instrumental in me realizing what is possible as a writer.

How did that translate into writing a book?

I just started submitting a lot and eventually got my first piece in The New Yorker right at the beginning of 2020. … I was just writing and submitting New Yorker pieces constantly. And luckily, Emma Allen, the editor, seemed to enjoy my sense of humor because I had a good amount of luck there between 2020 and 2024ish … and that’s when an agent saw that and was like, “Have you ever considered writing a book?” And I was like, “Now I am.”

How did you decide the book should focus on perception and sense of self?

I was looking at the pieces that I had published at the time. … I just realized a lot of the stuff that I was writing — and I don’t think it was a coincidence that I happened to be 25 or 26 at the time — was about this perception anxiety, like this idea of daily performance of self.

I was like, “I mean, seems like I think about this a lot,” and so it made a lot of sense to have the book be that. And then, I think in that same sort of idea brainstorming session, I came up with the title “Read This to Look Cool,” and it never changed.

Was there a time during the drafting that you wrote a line and thought, “Oh, that’s money?”

The first one that comes to mind … was in the essay about when I was writing for my college newspaper, and I’m at the frat or I’m at some sort of party, and it’s the guy who won’t stop talking to me about the movie. I write something like: “Everyone warned me that college men might take advantage of me, but I never imagined it would be this boring.”

I’m an obituary writer, so I have to ask: In the book, your more serious moments have to do with death. Why was that?

Both of my grandmothers died in the span of basically four months while I was drafting the book. So, talk about sitting down every day and joylessly writing. … I think I was just preoccupied with death a lot at the time, because it was happening, and I wanted to be honest about that.

I think that’s probably why there are these darker moments in it, which I think, ultimately, I’m really happy that the book is not one note. I’m glad that I let myself go to these other places, because I think it just makes it a little more complex and meaningful at the end of the day.

What do you hope people take away from this book?

I just hope they smile and are distracted from whatever is going on. … I wanted it to be a fun thing that you could pick up any time, read an essay. It’s entertaining, it’s funny, it’s relatable. …

But I’d say if there was any thematic thing, it’s kind of the simplest thing in the world, and yet we are all constantly relearning it — that you can perform every day, but ultimately, you’re always just going to be yourself. And so why not just be yourself?

This book was the first in a two-book deal. The second is a novel. Can you tell us what it’s about?

It’s a locked-room murder mystery where, basically, this boy band is trapped at the top of this hotel, surrounded by screaming fans, and they’re getting picked off one by one because one of them is killing the others because he wants to be a solo artist. It’s called “This Will Ruin the Tour,” and it does not have a release date.