"You’ve got a nice style and personality about you.” — George Carlin

Julie Seabaugh is a documentarian and author who chronicles the world of stand-up comedy. She directed September 2021 feature documentary Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11 for Vice and is creator/producer of Are We Good?, a SXSW and Tribeca documentary about Marc Maron now on the Criterion Channel. A documentary on the legendary Mitch Hedberg premieres in 2027. As a professional journalist for more than two decades, Seabaugh has covered the art form for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, GQ, The A.V. Club and numerous alt-weeklies. Her expertise on modern roasting culminated in 2018 book Ringside at Roast Battle, while 2022’s 50 Years of the Comedy Store vinyl boxed set features her liner notes. The comedian memoir The Hardest Part of Schizophrenia Is Spelling Schizophrenia, written with Byron Bowers, is out from Hachette/Grand Central Publishing on October 27, 2026. 

Having previously served as A&E staff writer at Las Vegas Weekly, Seabaugh won a 2015 Nevada Press Association Award for a cover profile tracing the downward health spiral of The Amazing Johnathan. “It’s obvious the author is a wordsmith,” judges wrote. “Every sentence is well thought out. It’s full of lively adjectives and truly paints a picture of what the Amazing Johnathan looks like, what he’s experiencing and how he got to his current state. I felt like he was sitting next to me, boisterously telling his story.”

Her love of Mitch Hedberg led to producing/hosting 2020’s Hope on Top: A Mitch Hedberg Oral History for SiriusXM’s Comedy Central channel. Positive Connections: A Brody Stevens Oral History debuted on SiriusXM’s RawDog channel in February 2023. The collection A Tight 20: Two Decades of Comedy Journalism is available now.

Festival judging/coverage/panelist/misc. includes the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Just for Laughs Montreal, SXSW, San Francisco Sketchfest, New York Comedy Festival, Just for Laughs Toronto, Sasquatch, Grand Rapids' Gilda's LaughFest, Montana's Big Sky Comedy Festival, Austin's Moontower, Portland's Bridgetown, the Seattle International Comedy Competition, Riot L.A., Nashville's Wild West Comedy Festival, Atlanta's Laughing Skull, Skankfest Las Vegas and the Palm Springs International Comedy Festival.

Photo credits: Troy Conrad