Kalliope Barlis is a New York City stand-up comedian, former professional golfer, and three-time best-selling author. She headlines a monthly show at West Side Comedy Club and plays clubs and festivals up and down the East Coast. Her clean, story-driven act turns hard moments — a loud Greek family dinner, a blown tournament, a fear nobody says out loud — into the kind of laugh that actually fixes something.

Kalliope Barlis is a New York City stand-up comedian with an unusual résumé. Before the clubs she played golf professionally — nationally from 1997 to 2000, and still winning: club champion at Bally’s Links in New York City, and third place at the 2022 Armco Team Series Pro-Am. Before that, she was a kid in a very loud Greek family, taking notes.

She works clean and she works from real life — the chaos of a Greek household, the quiet humiliations of competitive sport, and the fears people carry around and never mention. That last one she knows well: Kalliope is a licensed Master Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the author of three best-selling books, including Phobia Relief: From Fear to Freedom. Her TEDx talk of the same name has passed 2 million views, and the docu-series she produced and directed, Kalliope’s From Fear to Freedom, has won more than three dozen film festival awards and streams on Prime Video, Tubi, and Apple TV.

She headlines a monthly show at West Side Comedy Club and has played The Gotham Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club, Copacabana, Governors, Zanies Nashville, Don’t Tell, and Next In Line in Philadelphia. In 2026 she was a finalist in MicdUpNYC in Times Square, and she appears at the New York Comedy Festival, the New South Comedy Festival, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.