Literature at its most serious is almost always funny. It’s hard to name an authentic great—Dickens, Faulkner, Zadie Smith—who’s not a gifted comic, too. In our conversation for this ...

A few years ago, Jenny Jaffe needed to carve out some time from her job writing for the Disney series Big Hero 6 so she could finish creating an IFC show in which she starred as a dominatrix with OCD.