Dwight York

Early life York was born in Amery, Wisconsin, and graduated from Amery High School in 1980. In contrast to the "drifter" persona he puts on when performing comedy, York has said his "family was normal, small-town, churchgoing. They're not crazy." Before becoming a comedian, York worked at a Minnesota factory building windows on an assembly line. He has been compared with Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, George Carlin, Emo Philips, and Bobcat Goldthwait.

York has performed across the United States. York finished in second place at the 1995 Vail National Comedy Invitational in Colorado. He was a semifinalist at the 2009 Great American Comedy Festival. He finished second at the Laughlin Laugh Fest in Laughlin, Nevada in 2014. and has performed at the Harley-Davidson 100th anniversary celebration in Milwaukee,

Albums York has released two albums on Stand Up! Records.

Belongs In a Bar was recorded live in River Falls, Wisconsin. It was first released as a video in 2018, and later as an audio album in 2021. Reviewer Richard Lanoie of The Serious Comedy Site called the album "brilliant", with jokes that "line up like dominoes."

2009's Quickies was recorded live in Appleton, Wisconsin, and features cover art by MAD magazine cartoonist Mort Drucker. Minneapolis newspaper City Pages called it "as densely packed with jokes as a disc can get."

Other work York has written several books. The Vile File: Jokes Too Sick For the Stage and its followup More from the Vile File: 500 Sick Jokes compile one-liners from across his career as a comedian.

He also published a semi-autobiographical comic novel in 2019, What Luck, about a stand-up comedian wrestling with the difficulties of finding a "lucky break". Dwight York, Psychotic Criminal Comic (Comedy Gallery, 1996)

Books What Luck (2019) More from the Vile File: 500 Sick Jokes (-ismist Recordings, 2012) The Vile File: Jokes Too Sick for the Stage (Trailer House Press, 1999)