Stacy Dymalski

A native west-coaster, I started my professional story-telling career as a standup comic at age 19 when I did an open mic in San Francisco. After that I spent every weekend onstage in comedy clubs. Three years later I graduated from UC Berkeley with an Applied Math degree, and became an aerospace engineer, technical trainer, and sales support engineer for companies like McDonnell Douglas, Computer Associates, Arthur Andersen, IBM, and Adobe.

By day I honed my corporate speaking skills, but at night I continued perfecting my funny stories as a comedian in clubs like The Comedy Store, The Improv, The Ice House, and countless small clubs around the country. I was also a member of the improv groups The Fault Line Players and Off the Top Comedy.

A few years later I enrolled in the UCLA post graduate screenwriting certificate program, and focused primarily on story structure. As a result, I found my niche as a story consultant, helping everyone from studio execs to retirees find, write, and share their stories in the form of books and movies.

In 2012 I was a semi-finalist for the title of World Champion of Public Speaking on the world stage in the Toastmasters International Speech Contest, and in 2016 I gave a TEDx Talk about about my experience working with a federal prison inmate to help him write his personal story about his involvement in illegal immigration, which was then published by E-Magination as the book JACUMBA CONNECTION (by David Taylor). Soon after I adapted the book into the feature film screenplay "Checkpoint."

Today, I'm the author of the bestselling humor books, "Do We Have to Buy Gifts for Everybody?" and "Confessions of a Band Geek Mom," as well as the textbook, "The Memoir Midwife: Nine Steps to Self-Publish Your Book," which is the required text for the self-publishing and story development classes I teach at Los Angeles Valley College. I'm also a standup comedy instructor at A Comedy Academy in Burbank, CA.

As a featured comedian, I perform stand-up regularly in clubs all over Los Angeles, and my solo comedy show "A BIT MUCH" played to wide acclaim at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival, and won a Producer's Encore Award. In October 2023, I recorded my first one-hour standup comedy special, “UNFAMOUS IN HOLLYWOOD,” which is being produced into a comedy album.