Erma Louise Bombeck (née Fiste; February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996.

Between 1965 and April 17, 1996 – five days before her death – Bombeck wrote over four thousand newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife.

[5] Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after World War II, among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers.

She began elementary school one year earlier than usual for her age, in 1932, and became an excellent student and an avid reader.

Erma practiced tap dance and singing, and worked for a local radio station for a children's revue for eight years.

[citation needed] Erma entered Emerson Junior High School in 1940, and began writing a humorous column for its newspaper, The Owl.

[7] She completed high school in 1944 and sought to earn a college scholarship fund; for a year she worked as a typist and stenographer, for the Dayton Herald and several other companies, and also did minor journalistic assignments (obituaries, etc.)

She lived in her family home and worked at Rike's, a department store, where she wrote humorous material for the company newsletter.

In addition, she worked two part-time jobs – as a termite control accountant at an advertising agency[clarification needed] and as a public-relations person at the local YMCA.

Tom Price, commented to Erma about her great prospects as a writer, and she began to write for the university student publication, The Exponent.

She graduated in 1949 with a degree in English, and became a lifelong active contact for the university — helping financially and participating personally — and became a lifetime trustee of the institution in 1987.

In 1949, she converted to Catholicism, from the United Brethren church, and married Bill Bombeck, a former fellow student of the University of Dayton, who was a veteran of the World War II Korean front.

By 1969, five hundred U.S. newspapers featured her "At Wit's End" columns, and she was also writing for Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest, Family Circle, Redbook, McCall's, and Teen magazines.

In 1978, Bombeck was involved in the Presidential Advisory Committee for Women, particularly for the final implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment, with the ERA America organization's support.

By 1985, Bombeck's three weekly columns were being published by 900 newspapers in the United States and Canada, and were also being anthologized into a series of best-selling books.

Past keynote speakers have included Art Buchwald, Nancy Cartwright, Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor, Mike Peters, Bil Keane and Phil Donahue.

The workshop has spawned a blog, Humorwriters.org;[15] a documentary produced by ThinkTV and distributed nationally through American Public Television; an international writing competition hosted by the Washington-Centerville Public Library; an Ohio historical marker on the University of Dayton's campus; a monthly e-newsletter; a Facebook page; a Twitter feed; and an active online discussion group.

[16] In 2010, CBS Sunday Morning With Charles Osgood aired a Mother's Day tribute to Bombeck, using the workshop as a backdrop.

[19] A Chinese language translation of one of her works about her stepfather Albert Harris, "Father's Love" (父亲的爱), is included as one of the sixty oral reading passages in China's Putonghua Proficiency Test.