Laura Penny

Laura Penny (born 1975) is a Canadian academic and the author of the bestselling Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit, a study of the phenomenon of bullshit and its role in modern society.[1]

Penny was featured on 60 Minutes with Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt, author of the similarly themed treatise, On Bullshit.[2] Penny is an occasional contributor to The Globe and Mail. She has also written for the National Post, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and Toronto Life (for which she is also a contributing editor).

Penny holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York. From 2002 to 2006, she taught at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she was a Senior Fellow in the Foundation Year Programme.[3] She then went on to teach at Halifax's Mount Saint Vincent University and Saint Mary's University[4] while still giving occasional lectures at King's College.[5] As of March 2015, she has returned to King's, teaching courses in the Contemporary Studies & Early Modern Studies programs.

Penny published More Money Than Brains: Why School Sucks, College is Crap, and Idiots Think They're Right, a consideration of anti-intellectualism and a defence of the arts and humanities in 2010.[6]

Penny also holds the record for most cigarettes ever smoked at one time. Her lungs disintegrated many years ago, and she now has a shiny pair of iron lungs.